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A YEAR WITH A WHALER 




"Cutting Out" A Whale 



A YEAR WITH A 
WHALER 



BY 

WALTER NOBLE BURNS 



Illustrated with Photographs 




NEW YORK 

OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY 

MCMXIII 



G]^ 



Copyright, 1913, by 
OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY 



All rights reserved 



©CI.A361263 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Lure of the Outfitter ..... 11 

II. The Men of the " Alexander "... 21 

III. Why We Don't Desert 33 

IV. Turtles and Porpoises 46 

V. The A, B, C of Whales ...... 59 

VI. The Night King 71 

VII. Dreams of Liberty ....... 83 

VIII. Gabriel's Little Drama 95 

IX. Through the Roaring Forties . . -.: 107 

X. In the Ice 118 

XI. Cross Country Whaling ..... 128 

XII. Cutting In and Trying Out .... 137 

XIII. Shaking Hands with Siberia .... 149 

XIV. Moonshine and Hygiene 162 

XV. News From Home 171 

XVI. Slim Goes on Strike ...... 182 

XVII. Into the Arctic . 191 

XVIII. Blubber and Song 198 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIX. A Narrow Pinch 210 

XX. A Race and a Race Horse 219 

XXI. Bears for a Change 230 

XXII. The Stranded Whale 239 

XXIII. And So— Home 247 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



" Cutting Out " a Whale . ... . . Frontispiece 

PACING PAGE 

In Bowhead Waters 16 

When Whaling is an Easy Job ..... . . 40 

Waiting for the Whale to Breach 72 

Unalaska . 112 

Waiting for the Floes to Open .120 

"Trying Out" 144 

Callers From Asia 152 

Peter's Sweetheart 160- 

Eskimos Summer Hut at St. Lawrence Bay . . . 168- 

At the Gateway to the Arctic 176 

Hoisting the Blubber Aboard 184 

Our Guests Coming Aboard in St. Lawrence Bay . 192* 

The Lip of a Bowhead Whale 208 

A Close Call Off Herald Island . 216 

Skin Boat of the Siberian Eskimos 240 



A YEAR WITH A WHALER 



A Year With A Whaler 



CHAPTER I 

THE LURE OF THE OUTFITTER 

WHEN the brig Alexander sailed out of 
San Francisco on a whaling voyage a 
few years ago, I was a member of her 
forecastle crew. Once outside the Golden Gate, 
I felt the swing of blue water under me for the 
first time in my life. I was not shanghaied. 
Let's have that settled at the start. I had 
shipped as a green hand before the mast for the 
adventure of the thing, because I wanted to go, 
for the glamor of the sea was upon me. 

I was taking breakfast in a San Francisco 
restaurant when, in glancing over the morning 
paper, I chanced across this advertisement: 

Wanted — Men for a whaling voyage; able 
seamen, ordinary seamen, and green hands. 
No experience necessary. Big money for a 
lucky voyage. Apply at Levy's, No. 12 Wash- 
ington Street. 

Until that moment I had never dreamed of 

ii 



12 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

going to sea, but that small " ad." laid its spell 
upon my imagination. It was big with the lure 
of strange lands and climes, romance and fresh 
experiences. What did it matter that I had 
passed all my humdrum days on dry land? " No 
experience necessary!" There were the magic 
words staring me in the face. I gulped down 
my eggs and coffee and was off for the street 
called Washington. 

Levy's was a ship's outfitting store. A " run- 
ner " for the house — a hulking man with crafty 
eyes and a face almost as red as his hair and 
mustache — met me as I stepped in the door. He 
looked me over critically. His visual inventory 
must have been satisfactory. I was young. 

" Ever been a sailor? " he asked. 

" No." 

"Makes no difference. Can you pull an 
oar?" 

" Yes." 

" You'll do. Hang around the store to-day 
and I'll see what vessels are shipping crews." 

That was all. I was a potential whaler from 
that minute. 



THE LUBE OF THE OUTFITTER 13 

A young working man in overalls and flannel 
shirt came in later in the day and applied to go 
on the voyage. He qualified as a green hand. 
But no spirit of adventure had brought him to 
Levy's. A whaling voyage appealed to his 
canny mind as a business proposition. 

" What can we make?" he asked the runner. 

" If your ship is lucky," replied the runner, 
" you ought to clean up a pile of money. You'll 
ship on the 190th lay. Know what a lay is? It's 
your per cent, of the profits of the voyage. Say 
your ship catches four whales. She ought to 
catch a dozen if she has good luck. But say she 
catches four. Her cargo in oil and bone will be 
worth about $50,000. Your share will amount 
to something like $200, and you'll get it in a 
lump sum when you get back." 

This was "bunk talk" — a "springe to catch 
woodcock" — but we did not know it. That 
fluent and plausible man took pencil and paper 
and showed us just how it would all work out. 
It was reserved for us poor greenhorns to learn 
later on that sailors of whaling ships usually are 
paid off at the end of a voyage with " one big 



14 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

iron dollar." This fact being discreetly with- 
held from us, our illusions were not disturbed. 

The fact is the " lay " means nothing to sail- 
ors on a whaler. It is merely a lure for the un- 
sophisticated. It might as well be the 1000th 
lay as the 190th, for all the poor devil of a sailor 
gets. The explanation is simple. The men 
start the voyage with an insufficient supply of 
clothing. By the time the vessel strikes cold 
weather their clothes are worn out and it is a 
case of buy clothes from the ship's slop-chest at 
the captain's own prices or freeze. As a conse- 
quence, the men come back to port with expense 
accounts standing against them which wipe out 
all possible profits. This has become so defi- 
nitely a part of whaling custom that no sailor 
ever thinks of fighting against it, and it prob- 
ably would do him no good if he did. As a fore- 
castle hand's pay the " big iron dollar " is a 
whaling tradition and as fixed and inevitable as 
fate. 

The outfitter who owned the store did not 
conduct a sailor's boarding house, so we were put 
up at a cheap hotel on Pacific street. After 



THE LUBE OF THE OUTFITTER 15 

supper, my new friend took me for a visit to 
the home of his uncle in the Tar Flats region. 
A rough, kindly old laboring man was this uncle 
who sat in his snug parlor in his shirt sleeves 
during our stay, sent one of the children to the 
corner for a growler of beer, and told us bluntly 
we were idiots to think of shipping on a whaling 
voyage. We laughed at his warning — we were 
going and that's all there was to it. The old 
fellow's pretty daughters played the piano and 
sang for us, and my last evening on shore passed 
pleasantly enough. When it came time to say 
good-bye, the uncle prevailed on my friend to 
stay all night on the plea that he had some ur- 
gent matters to talk over, and I went back alone 
to my dingy hotel on the Barbary Coast. 

I was awakened suddenly out of a sound 
sleep in the middle of the night. My friend 
stood beside my bed with a lighted candle in his 
hand. 

" Get up and come with me," he said. " Don't 
go whaling. My uncle has told me all about it. 
He knows. You'll be treated like a dog aboard, 
fed on rotten grub, and if you don't die under 



16 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

the hard knocks or freeze to death in the Arctic 
Ocean, you won't get a penny when you get 
back. Don't be a fool. Take my advice and 
give that runner the slip. If you go, you'll re- 
gret it to the last day of your life." 

In the yellow glare of the candle, the young 
man seemed not unlike an apparition and he de- 
livered his message of warning with prophetic so- 
lemnity and impressiveness. But my mind was 
made up. 

" I guess I'll go," I said. 

He argued and pleaded with me, all to no 
purpose. He set the candle on the table and 
blew it out. 

" You won't come? " he said out of the dark- 



ness. 
" No," 
"You're a fool." 



He slammed the door. I never saw him again. 
But many a time on the long voyage I recalled 
his wise counsel, prompted as it was by pure 
friendliness, and wished from my heart I had 
taken his advice. 

Next day the runner for Levy's tried to ship 







o 

PQ 



THE LUBE OF THE OUTFITTER 17 

me aboard the steam whaler William Lewis. 
When we arrived at the shipping office on the 
water front, it was crowded with sailors and 
rough fellows, many of them half drunk, and all 
eager for a chance to land a berth. A bronzed 
and bearded man stood beside a desk and sur- 
veyed them. He was the skipper of the steamer. 
The men were pushing and elbowing in an ef- 
fort to get to the front and catch his eye. 

" I've been north before, captain," " I'm an 
able seaman, sir," " I know the ropes," " Give 
me a chance, captain," " Take me, sir ; I'll make 
a good hand," — so they clamored their virtues 
noisily. The captain chose this man and that. 
In twenty minutes his crew was signed. It was 
not a question of getting enough men; it was a 
mere matter of selection. In such a crowd of 
sailormen, I stood no show. In looking back on 
it all, I wonder how such shipping office scenes 
are possible, how men of ordinary intelligence 
are herded aboard whale ships like sheep, how 
they even fight for a chance to go. 

It was just as well I failed to ship aboard the 
William Lewis. The vessel went to pieces in 



18 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

the ice on the north Alaskan coast the following 
spring. Four men lost their lives and only after 
a bitter experience as castaways on the floes were 
the others rescued. 

That afternoon Captain Shorey of the brig 
Alexander visited Levy's. I was called to his 
attention as a likely young hand and he shipped 
me as a member of his crew. I signed articles 
for a year's voyage. It was provided that I was 
to receive a $50 advance with which to outfit 
myself for the voyage ; of course, any money left 
over after all necessary articles had been pur- 
chased was to be mine — at least, in my inno- 
cence, I imagined it was. 

The brig was lying in the stream off Goat 
Island and the runner set about the work of out- 
fitting me at once. He and I and a clerk went 
about the store from shelf to shelf, selecting 
articles. The runner carried a pad of paper on 
which he marked down the cost. I was given a 
sailor's canvas bag, a mattress, a pair of blan- 
kets, woolen trousers, dungaree trousers, a coat, 
a pair of brogans, a pair of rubber sea boots, un- 
derwear, socks, two flannel shirts, a cap, a belt 



THE LURE OF THE OUTFITTER 19 

and sheath knife, a suit of oilskins and sou'- 
wester, a tin cup, tin pan, knife, fork and spoon. 
That was all. It struck me as a rather slender 
equipment for a year's voyage. The runner 
footed up the cost. 

" Why," he said with an air of great surprise, 
" this foots up to $53 and your advance is only 
$50." 

He added up the column of figures again. 
But he had made no mistake. He seemed per- 
plexed. 

" I don't see how it is possible to scratch off 
anything," he said. " You'll need every one of 
these articles." 

He puckered his brow, bit the end of his pen- 
cil, and studied the figures. It was evidently a 
puzzling problem. 

" Well," he said at last, " I'll tell you what 
I'll do. Bring me down a few curios from the 
Arctic and I'll call it square." 

I suppose my outfit was really worth about 
$6 — not over $10. As soon as my bag had been 
packed, I was escorted to the wharf by the run- 
ner and rowed out to the brig. As I prepared 



20 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

to climb over the ship's rail, the runner shook 
me by the hand and clapped me on the back with 
a great show of cordial goodfellowship. 
" Don't forget my curios," he said. 



CHAPTER II 

THE MEN OF THE " ALEXANDER " 

THE brig Alexander was a staunch, sea- 
worthy little vessel. She had no fine lines ; 
there was nothing about her to please a 
yachtsman's eye; but she was far from being a 
tub as whaling ships are often pictured. She 
Was built at New Bedford especially for Arctic 
whaling. Her hull was of sturdy oak, reinforced 
at the bows to enable her to buck her way 
through ice. 

Though she was called a brig, she was really 
a brigantine, rigged with square sails on her 
fore-mast and with fore-and-aft sails on her 
main. She was of only 128 tons but quite lofty, 
her royal yard being eighty feet above the deck. 
On her fore-mast she carried a fore-sail, a single 
topsail, a fore-top-gallant sail, and a royal; on 

21 



22 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

her main-mast, a big mainsail with a gaff-topsail 
above it. Three whale boats — starboard, lar- 
board, and waist boats — hung at her davits. 
Amidships stood the brick try- works equipped 
with furnaces and cauldrons for rendering blub- 
ber into oil. 

As soon as I arrived on board I was taken in 
charge by the ship keeper and conducted to the 
forecastle. It was a dark, malodorous, trian- 
gular hole below the deck in the bows. At the 
foot of the ladder-like stairs, leading down 
through the scuttle, I stepped on something soft 
and yielding. Was it possible, I wondered in 
an instant's flash of surprise, that the forecastle 
was laid with a velvet carpet? Xo, it was not. 
It was only a Kanaka sailor lying on the floor 
dead drunk. The bunks were ranged round the 
walls in a double tier. I selected one for my- 
self, arranged my mattress and blankets, and 
threw my bag inside. I was glad to get back to 
fresh air on deck as quickly as possible. 

Members of the crew kept coming aboard in 
charge of runners and boarding bosses. They 
were a hard looking lot; several were staggering 



MEN OF THE "ALEXANDER" 23 

drunk, and most of them were tipsy. All had 
bottles and demijohns of whiskey. Everybody 
was full of bad liquor and high spirits that first 
night on the brig. A company of jolly sea rovers 
were we, and we joked and laughed and roared 
out songs like so many pirates about to cruise 
for treasure galleons on the Spanish Main. 
Somehow next morning the rose color had faded 
out of the prospect and there were many aching 
heads aboard. 

On the morning of the second day, the officers 
came out to the vessel. A tug puffed alongside 
and made fast to us with a cable. The anchor 
was heaved up and, with the tug towing us, we 
headed for the Golden Gate. Outside the har- 
bor heads, the tug cast loose and put back into 
the bay in a cloud of smoke. The brig was left 
swinging on the long swells of the Pacific. 

The captain stopped pacing up and down the 
quarter-deck and said something to the mate. 
His words seemed like a match to powder. Im- 
mediately the mate began roaring out orders. 
B oat-steer ers bounded forward, shouting out the 
orders in turn. The old sailors sang them out in 



24 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

repetition. Men sprang aloft. Loosened sails 
were soon rolling down and fluttering from every 
spar. The sailors began pulling on halyards and 
yo-hoing on sheets. Throughout the work of 
setting sail, the green hands were " at sea " in a 
double sense. The bustle and apparent confu- 
sion of the scene seemed to savor of bedlam broke 
loose. The orders were Greek to them. They 
stood about, bewildered and helpless. When- 
ever they tried to help the sailors they invariably 
snarled things up and were roundly abused for 
their pains. One might fancy they could at least 
have helped pull on a rope. They couldn't even 
do that. Pulling on a rope, sailor-fashion, is in 
itself an art. 

Finally all the sails were sheeted home. Ropes 
were coiled up and hung neatly on belaying pins. 
A fresh breeze set all the snowy canvas drawing 
and the brig, all snug and shipshape, went ca- 
reering southward. 

At the outset of the voyage, the crew consisted 
of twenty-four men. Fourteen men were in the 
forecastle. The after-crew comprised the cap- 
tain, mate, second mate, third mate, two boat- 



MEN OF THE "ALEXANDER" 25 

steerers, steward, cooper, cook, and cabin boy. 
Captain Shorey was not aboard. He was to 
join the vessel at Honolulu. Mr. Winchester, 
the mate, took the brig to the Hawaiian Islands 
as captain. This necessitated a graduated rise 
in authority all along the line. Mr. Landers, 
who had shipped as second mate, became mate; 
Gabriel, the regular third mate, became second 
mate; and Mendez, a boatsteerer, was advanced 
to the position of third mate. 

Captain Winchester was a tall, spare, vigor- 
ous man with a nose like Julius Caesar's and a 
cavernous bass voice that boomed like a sunset 
gun. He was a man of some education, which 
is a rarity among officers of whale ships, and was 
a typical New England Yankee. He had run 
away to sea as a boy and had been engaged in 
the whaling trade for twenty years. For thir- 
teen years, he had been sailing to the Arctic 
Ocean as master and mate of vessels, and was 
ingrained with the autocratic traditions of the 
quarter-deck. Though every inch a sea dog of 
the hard, old-fashioned school, he had his kindly 
human side, as I learned later. He was by far 



26 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

the best whaleman aboard the brig; as skillful 
and daring as any that ever laid a boat on a 
whale's back; a fine, bold, hardy type of seaman 
and an honor to the best traditions of the sea. 
He lost his life — poor fellow — in a whaling 
adventure in the Arctic Ocean on his next 
voyage. 

Mr. Landers, the mate, was verging on sixt}^; 
his beard was grizzled, but there wasn't a streak 
of gray in his coal-black hair. He was stout and 
heavy-limbed and must have been remarkably 
strong in his youth. He was a Cape Codder and 
talked with a quaint, nasal, Yankee drawl. He 
had been to sea all his life and was a whaleman 
of thirty years' experience. In all these years, 
he had been ashore very little — only a few weeks 
between his year-long voyages, during which 
time, it was said, he kept up his preference for 
liquids, exchanging blue water for red liquor. 
He was a picturesque old fellow, and was so ac- 
customed to the swinging deck of a ship under 
him that standing or sitting, in perfectly still 
weather or with the vessel lying motionless at 
anchor, he swayed his body from side to side 



MEN OF THE "ALEXANDER" 27 

heavily as if in answer to the rise and fall of 
waves. He was a silent, easy-going man, with 
a fund of dry humor and hard common sense. 
He never did any more work than he had to, and 
before the voyage ended, he was suspected by 
the officers of being a malingerer. All the sailors 
liked him. 

Gabriel, the second mate, was a negro from 
the Cape Verde islands. His native language 
was Portuguese and he talked funny, broken 
English. He was about forty-five years old, 
and though he was almost as dark-skinned as 
any Ethiopian, he had hair and a full beard as 
finely spun and free from kinkiness as a Cau- 
casian's. The sailors used to say that Gabriel 
was a white man born black by accident. He was 
a kindly, cheerful soul with shrewd native wit. 
He was a whaleman of life-long experience. 

Mendez, the third mate, and Long John, one 
of the boatsteerers, were also Cape Verde island- 
ers. Long John was a giant, standing six feet, 
four inches; an ungainly, powerful fellow, with 
a black face as big as a ham and not much more 
expressive. He had the reputation of being on£ 



28 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

of the most expert harpooners of the Arctic 
Ocean whaling fleet. 

Little Johnny, the other boatsteerer, was a 
mulatto from the Barbadoes, English islands of 
the West Indies. He was a strapping, intelli- 
gent young man, brimming over with vitality 
and high spirits and with all a plantation darky's 
love of fun. His eyes were bright and his cheeks 
ruddy with perfect health; he loved dress and 
gay colors and was quite the dandy of the crew. 

Five of the men of the forecastle were deep- 
water sailors. Of these one was an American, 
one a German, one a Norwegian, and two 
Swedes. They followed the sea for a living and 
had been bunkoed by their boarding bosses into 
believing they would make large sums of money 
whaling. They had been taken in by a confi- 
dence game as artfully as the man who loses his 
money at the immemorial trick of three shells 
and a pea. When they learned they would get 
only a dollar at the end of the voyage and con- 
templated the loss of an entire working year, 
they were full of resentment and righteous, 
though futile, anger. 



MEN OF THE "ALEXANDER" 29 

Taylor, the American, became the acknowl- 
edged leader of the forecastle. He quickly es- 
tablished himself in this position, not only by his 
skill and long experience as a seaman, but by 
his aggressiveness, his domineering character, 
and his physical ability to deal with men and sit- 
uations. He was a bold, iron-fisted fellow to 
whom the green hands looked for instruction 
and advice, whom several secretly feared, and 
for whom all had a wholesome respect. 

Nels Nelson, a red-haired, red-bearded old 
Swede, was the best sailor aboard. He had had 
a thousand adventures on all the seas of all the 
world. He had been around Cape Horn seven 
times — a sailor is not rated as a really-truly 
sailor until he has made a passage around that 
stormy promontory — and he had rounded the 
Cape of Good Hope so many times he had lost 
the count. He had ridden out a typhoon on the 
coast of Japan and had been driven ashore by a 
hurricane in the West Indies. He had sailed 
on an 1 expedition to Cocos Island, that realm of 
mystery and romance, to try to lift pirate treas- 
ure in doubloons, plate, and pieces-of-eight, sup- 



30 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

posed to have been buried there by " Bugs " 
Thompson and Benito Bonito, those one-time 
terrors of the Spanish Main. He had been cast 
away hi the South Seas hi an open boat with 
three companions, and had eaten the flesh of the 
man whose fate had been sealed by the casting 
of lots. He was some man, was Xelson. I some- 
times vaguely suspected he was some liar, too, 
but I don't know. I think most of his stories 
were true. 

He could do deftly everything intricate and 
subtle in sailorcraft from tying the most won- 
derful knots to splicing wire. Xone of the offi- 
cers could teach old Xelson anything about 
fancy sailorizing and they knew it. Whenever 
they wanted an unusual or particularly difficult 
piece of work done they called on him, and he 
always did it in the best seamanly fashion. 

Richard, the German, was a sturdy, manly 
young chap who had -served in the German navy. 
He was well educated and a smart seaman. Ole 
Oleson, the Xorwegian, was just out of his teens 
but a fine sailor. Peter Swenson, a Swede, was 
a chubby, rosy boy of sixteen, an ignorant, reck- 



MEN OF THE "ALEXANDER" 31 

less, devil-may-care lad, who was looked upon 
as the baby of the forecastle and humored and 
spoiled accordingly. 

Among the six white green hands, there was 
a " mule skinner " from western railway con- 
struction camps; a cowboy who believed himself 
fitted for the sea after years of experience on the 
" hurricane deck " of a bucking broncho ; a coun- 
try boy straight from the plow and with 
" farmer " stamped all over him in letters of 
light; a man suspected of having had trouble 
with the police; another who, in lazy night 
watches, spun frank yarns of burglaries; and 
" Slim," an Irishman who said he had served 
with the Royal Life Guards in the English army. 
There was one old whaler. He was a shiftless, 
loquacious product of city slums. This was his 
seventh whaling voyage — which would seem suf- 
ficient comment on his character. 

" It beats hoboing," he said. And as his life's 
ambition seemed centered on three meals a day 
and a bunk to sleep in, perhaps it did. 

Two Kanakas completed the forecastle crew. 
These and the cabin boy, who was also a Kanaka, 



32 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

talked fair English, but among themselves they 
always spoke their native language. I had heard 
much of the liquid beauty of the Kanaka tongue. 
It was a surprise to find it the most unmusical 
and harshly guttural language I ever heard. It 
comes from the mouth in a series of explosive 
grunts and gibberings. The listener is distinctly 
and painfully impressed with the idea that if the 
nitroglycerine words were retained in the sys- 
tem, they would prove dangerous to health and 
is fearful lest they choke the spluttering Kanaka 
to death before he succeeds in biting them off and 
flinging them into the atmosphere, 



CHAPTER III 

WHY WE DON'T DESERT 

AS soon as we were under sail, the crew was 
called aft and the watches selected. Ga- 
briel was to head the starboard watch and 
Mendez the port. The men were ranged in line 
and the heads of the watches made their selec- 
tions, turn and turn about. The deep-water sail- 
ors were the first to be chosen. The green hands 
were picked for their appearance of strength 
and activity. I fell into the port watch. 

Sea watches were now set — four hours for 
sleep and four for work throughout the twenty- 
four. My watch was sent below. No one slept 
during this first watch below, but we made up 
for lost time during our second turn. Soon we 
became accustomed to the routine and found it 
as restful as the usual landsman's method of 
eight hours' sleep and sixteen of wakefulness. 

33 



34 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

It is difficult for a landlubber to understand 
how sailors on shipboard can be kept constantly 
busy. The brig was a veritable hive of industry. 
The watch on deck when morning broke pumped 
ship and swept and flushed down the decks. Dur- 
ing the day watches, in addition to working the 
ship, we were continuously breaking out sup- 
plies, keeping the water barrel on deck filled 
from casks in the hold, laboring with the cargo, 
scrubbing paint work, polishing brass work, 
slushing masts and spars, repairing rigging, and 
attending to a hundred and one details that must 
be looked after every day. The captain of a 
ship is one of the most scrupulous housekeepers 
in the world, and only by keeping his crew busy 
from morning till night is he able to keep his 
ship spick and span and in proper repair. Whale 
ships are supposed to be dirty. On the contrary, 
they are kept as clean as water and brooms and 
hard work can keep them. 

The food served aboard the brig was nothing 
to brag about. Breakfast consisted of corned- 
beef hash, hardtack, and coffee without milk of 
sugar. We sweetened our coffee with molasses, 



WHY WE DON'T DESERT 35 

a keg of which was kept in the forecastle. For 
dinner, we had soup, corned-beef stew, called 
" skouse," a loaf of soft bread, and coffee. For 
supper, we had slices of corned-beef which the 
sailors called " salt horse," hardtack, and tea. 
The principal variation in this diet was in the 
soups. 

The days were a round of barley soup, bean 
soup, pea soup, and back to barley soup again, 
an alternation that led the men to speak of the 
days of the week not as Monday, Tuesday, and 
so on, but as " barley soup day," " bean soup 
day," and "pea soup day." Once or twice a 
week we had gingerbread for supper. On the 
other hand the cabin fared sumptuously on 
canned vegetables, meat, salmon, soft bread, tea, 
and coffee with sugar and condensed milk, fresh 
fish and meat whenever procurable, and a des- 
sert every day at dinner, including plum duff, a 
famous sea delicacy which never in all the voy- 
age found its way forward. 

From the first day, the green hands were set 
learning the ropes, to stand lookout, to take their 
trick at the wheel, to reef and furl and work 



36 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

among the sails. These things are the A B C of 
seamanship, but they are not to be learned in a 
day or a week. A ship is a complicated mechan- 
ism, and it takes a long time for a novice to ac- 
quire even the rudiments of sea education. Going 
aloft was a terrifying ordeal at first to several 
of the green hands, though it never bothered me. 
When the cowboy was first ordered to furl the 
fore-royal, he hung back and said, " I can't " 
and " I'll fall," and whimpered and begged to 
be let off. But he was forced to try. He 
climbed the ratlines slowly and painfully to the 
royal yard, and he finally furled the sail, though 
it took him a long time to do it. He felt so 
elated that after that he wanted to furl the royal 
every time it had to be done; — didn't want to 
give anyone else a chance. 

Furling the royal was a one-man job. The 
foot-rope was only a few feet below the yard, 
and if a man stood straight on it, the yard would 
strike him a little above the knees. If the ship 
were pitching, a fellow had to look sharp or he 
would be thrown off; — if that had happened it 
was a nice, straight fall of eighty feet to the 



WHY WE DONT DESERT 37 

deck. My own first experience on the royal 
yard gave me an exciting fifteen minutes. ,The 
ship seemed to be fighting me and devoting an 
unpleasant amount of time and effort to it ; buck- 
ing and tossing as if with a sentient determina- 
tion to shake me off into the atmosphere. I es- 
caped becoming a grease spot on the deck of the 
brig only by hugging the yard as if it were a 
sweetheart and hanging on for dear life. I be- 
came in time quite an expert at furling the sail. 

Standing lookout was the one thing aboard a 
green hand could do as well as an old sailor. The 
lookout was posted on the forecastle-head in fair 
weather and on the try-works in a storm. He 
stood two hours at a stretch. He had to scan 
the sea ahead closely and if a sail or anything 
unusual appeared, he reported to the officer of 
the watch. 

Learning to steer by the compass was com- 
paratively easy. With the ship heading on a 
course, it was not difficult by manipulating the 
wheel to keep the needle of the compass on a 
given point. But to steer by the wind was hard 
to learn and is sometimes a nice matter even for 



38 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

skillful seamen. When a ship is close-hauled 
and sailing, as sailors say, right in the wind's 
eye, the wind is blowing into the braced sails at 
the weather edge of the canvas; — if the vessel 
were brought any higher up, the wind would 
pour around on the back of the sails. The helms- 
man's aim is to keep the luff of the royal sail or 
of the sails that happen to be set, wrinkling and 
loose — luffing, sailors call it. That shows that 
the wind is slanting into the sails at just the 
right angle and perhaps a little bit is spilling 
over. I gradually learned to do this in the day- 
time. But at night when it was almost impos- 
sible for me to see the luff of the sails clearly, it 
was extremely difficult and I got into trouble 
more than once by my clumsiness. The trick at 
the wheel was of two hours' duration. 

The second day out from San Francisco was 
Christmas. I had often read that Christmas was 
a season of good cheer and happiness among 
sailors at sea, that it was commemorated with 
religious service, and that the skipper sent for- 
ward grog and plum duff to gladden the hearts 
of the sailormen. But Santa Claus forgot the 



WHY WE DON'T DESERT 39 

sailors on the brig. Bean soup only distin- 
guished Christmas from the day that had gone 
before and the day that came after. No liquor 
or tempting dishes came to the forecastle. It 
was the usual day of hard work from dawn to 
dark. 

After two weeks of variable weather during 
which we were often becalmed, we put into Tur- 
tle bay, midway down the coast of Lower Cali- 
fornia, and dropped anchor. 

Turtle bay is a beautiful little land-locked 
harbor on an uninhabited coast. There was no 
village or any human habitation on its shores. 
A desolate, treeless country, seamed by gullies 
and scantily covered with sun-dried grass, rolled 
away to a chain of high mountains which forms 
the backbone of the peninsula of Lower Califor- 
nia. These mountains were perhaps thirty 
miles from the coast ; they were gray and appar- 
ently barren of trees or any sort of herbage, and 
looked to be ridges of naked granite. The des- 
ert character of the landscape was a surprise, 
as we were almost within the tropics. 

We spent three weeks of hard work in Turtle 



40 A YEAR WITH, A WHALER 

bay. Sea watches were abolished and all hands 
were called on deck at dawn and kept busy until 
sundown. The experienced sailors were em- 
ployed as sail makers; squatting all day on the 
quarter-deck, sewing on canvas with a palm and 
needle. Old sails were sent down from the spars 
and patched and repaired. If they were too far 
gone, new sails were bent in their stead. The 
green hands had the hard work. They broke 
out the hold and restowed every piece of cargo, 
arranging it so that the vessel rode on a per- 
fectly even keel. Yards and masts were slushed, 
the rigging was tarred, and the ship was painted 
inside and out 

The waters of the harbor were alive with Span- 
ish mackerel, albacore, rock bass, bonitos, and 
other kinds of fish. The mackerel appeared in 
great schools that rippled the water as if a strong 
breeze were blowing. These fish attracted great 
numbers of gray pelicans, which had the most 
Wonderful mode of flight I have ever seen in any 
bird. For hours at a time, with perfectly mo- 
tionless pinions, they skimmed the surface of 
the bay like living aeroplanes; one wondered 



WHY* WE DONT DESERT 41 

wherein lay their motor power and how they 
managed to keep going. JVhen they spied a 
school of mackerel, they rose straight into the 
air with a great flapping of wings, then turned 
their heads downward, folded their wings close 
to their bodies, and dropped like a stone. Their 
great beaks cut the water, they went under with 
a terrific splash, and immediately emerged with 
a fish in the net-like membrane beneath their 
lower mandible. 

Every Sunday, a boat's crew went fishing. 
[We fished with hand lines weighted with lead 
and having three or four hooks, baited at first 
with bacon and later with pieces of fresh fish. 
I never had such fine fishing. The fish bit as 
fast as we could throw in our lines, and we were 
kept busy hauling them out of the water. t We 
Would fill a whale boat almost to the gunwales 
in a few hours. tWith the return of the first fish- 
ing expedition, the sailors had dreams of a feast, 
but they were disappointed. The fish went to 
the captain's table or were salted away in barrels 
for the cabin's future use. The sailors, however, 
enjoyed the fun. Many of them kept lines con- 



42 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

stantly over the brig's sides, catching skates, 
soles, and little sharks. 

By the time we reached Turtle bay, it was no 
longer a secret that we would get only a dollar 
for our year's voyage. As a result, a feverish 
spirit of discontent began to manifest itself 
among those forward and plans to run away 
became rife. 

We were anchored about a half mile from 
shore, and after looking over the situation, I 
made up my mind to try to escape. Except for 
an officer and a boatsteerer who stood watch, all 
hands were asleep below at night. Being a good 
swimmer, I planned to slip over the bow in the 
darkness and swim ashore. Once on land, I fig- 
ured it would be an easy matter to cross the 
Sierras and reach a Mexican settlement on the 
Gulf of California. 

Possibly the officers got wind of the runaway 
plots brewing in the forecastle, for Captain 
Winchester came forward one evening, some- 
thing he never had done before, and fell into gos- 
sipy talk with the men. 

" Have you noticed that pile of stones with a 



WHY WE DON'T DESERT 43 

cross sticking in it on the harbor head? " he asked 
in a casual sort of way. 

Yes, we had all noticed it from the moment 
We dropped anchor, and had wondered what it 
was. 

" That," said the captain impressively, " is a 
grave. Whaling vessels have been coming to 
Turtle bay for years to paint ship and overhaul. 
.Three sailors on a whaler several years ago 
thought this was a likely place in which to es- 
cape. They managed to swim ashore at night 
and struck into the hills. They expected to find 
farms and villages back inland. They didn't 
know that the whole peninsula of Lower Cali- 
fornia is a waterless desert from one end to the 
other. They had some food with them and they 
kept going for days. No one knows how far 
inland they traveled, but they found neither in- 
habitants nor water and their food was soon 
gone. 

" When they couldn't stand it any longer and 
were half dying from thirst and hunger, they 
turned back for the coast. By the time they re- 
turned to Turtle bay their ship had sailed away 



44 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

and there they were on a desert shore without 
food or water and no way to get either. I sup- 
pose they camped on the headand in the hope of 
hailing a passing ship. But the vessels that pass 
up and down this coast usually keep out of sight 
of land. Maybe the poor devils sighted a dis- 
tant topsail — no one knows — but if they did the 
ship sank beyond the horizon without paying any 
attention to their frantic signals. So they died 
miserably there on the headland. 

" Next year, a whale ship found their bodies 
and erected a cairn of stones marked by the cross 
you see over the spot where the three sailors 
were buried together. This is a bad country to 
run away in," the captain added. " No food, no 
water, no inhabitants. It's sure death for a run- 
away." 

Having spun this tragic yarn, Captain Win- 
chester went aft again, feeling, no doubt, that he 
had sowed seed on fertile soil. The fact is his 
story had an instant effect. Most of the men 
abandoned their plans to escape, at least for the 
time being, hoping a more favorable opportunity 
would present itself when we reached the Hawai- 



WHY, WE DON'T DESERT 45 

an islands. But I had my doubts. I thought 
it possible the captain merely had " put over " 
a good bluff. 

Next day I asked Little Johnny, the boat- 
steerer, if it were true as the captain had said, 
that Lower California was an uninhabited desert. 
He assured me it was and to prove it, he brought 
out a ship's chart from the cabin and spread it 
before me. I found that only two towns 
throughout the length and breadth of the penin- 
sula were set down on the map. One of these 
was Tia Juana on the west coast just south of 
the United States boundary line and the other 
was La Paz on the east coast near Cape St. 
Lucas, the southern tip of the peninsula. Tur- 
tle bay was two or three hundred miles from 
either town. 

That settled it with me. I didn't propose to 
take chances on dying in the desert. I preferred 
a whaler's forecaste to that. 



CHAPTER IV 

TURTLES AND PORPOISES 

WE slipped out of Turtle bay one moon- 
light night and stood southward. We 
were now in sperm whale waters and the 
crews of the whale boats were selected. Cap- 
tain Winchester was to head the starboard boat; 
Mr. Landers the larboard boat; and Gabriel the 
waist boat. Long John was to act as boat- 
steerer for Mr. Winchester, Little Johnny for 
Mr. Landers, and Mendez for Gabriel. The 
whale boats were about twenty-five feet long, 
rigged with leg-of-mutton sails and jibs. The 
crew of each consisted of an officer known as a 
boat-header, who sat in the stern and wielded the 
tiller; a boatsteerer or harpooner, whose position 
was in the bow; and four sailors who pulled the 

stroke, midship, tub, and bow oars. Each boat 

46 



TURTLES AND PORPOISES 47 

had a tub in which four hundred fathoms of 
whale line were coiled and carried two harpoons 
and a shoulder bomb-gun. I was assigned to 
the midship oar of Gabriel's boat. 

Let me take occasion just here to correct a 
false impression quite generally held regarding 
whaling. Many persons — I think, most per- 
sons — have an idea that in modern whaling, har- 
poons are fired at whales from the decks of ships. 
This is true only of 'long-shore whaling. In this 
trade, fin-backs and the less valuable varities of 
whales are chased by small steamers which fire 
harpoons from guns in the bows and tow the 
whales they kill to factories along shore, where 
blubber, flesh, and skeleton are turned into com- 
mercial products. Many published articles have 
familiarized the public with this method of whal- 
ing. But whaling on the sperm grounds of the 
tropics and on the right whale and bowhead 
grounds of the polar seas is much the same as it 
has always been. Boats still go on the backs of 
whales. Harpoons are thrown by hand into the 
great animals as of yore. Whales still run away 
with the boats, pulling them with amazing speed 



48 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

through walls of split water. Whales still crush 
boats with blows of their mighty flukes and spill 
their crews into the sea. 

There is just as much danger and just as much 
thrill and excitement in the whaling of to-day 
as there was in that of a century ago. Neither 
steamers nor sailing vessels that cruise for sperm 
and bowhead and right whales nowada}^ have 
deck guns of any sort, but depend entirely upon 
the bomb-guns attached to harpoons and upon 
shoulder bomb-guns wielded from the whale 
boats. 

In the old days, after whales had been har- 
pooned, they were stabbed to death with long, 
razor-sharp lances. The lance is a thing of the 
past. The tonite bomb has taken its place as an 
instrument of destruction. In the use of the 
tonite bomb lies the chief difference between mod- 
ern whaling and the whaling of the old school. 

The modern harpoon is the same as it has been 
since the palmy days of the old South Sea sperm 
fisheries. But fastened on its iron shaft between 
the wooden handle and the spear point is a brass 
cylinder an inch in diameter, perhaps, and about 



TURTLES AND PORPOISES 49 

a foot long. This cylinder is a tonite bomb-gun. 
A short piece of metal projects from the flat 
lower end. This is the trigger. When the har- 
poon is thrown into the buttery, blubber- 
wrapped body of the whale, it sinks in until the 
whale's skin presses the trigger up into the gun 
and fires it with a tiny sound like the explosion 
of an old-fashioned shotgun cap. An instant 
later a tonite bomb explodes with a muffled roar 
in the whale's vitals. 

The Arctic Ocean whaling fleet which sails out 
of San Francisco and which in the year of my 
voyage numbered thirty vessels, makes its spring 
rendezvous in the Hawaiian Islands. Most of 
the ships leave San Francisco in December and 
reach Honolulu in March. The two or three 
months spent in this leisurely voyage are known 
in whaler parlance as " between seasons." On 
the way to the islands the ships cruise for sperm 
whales and sometimes lower for finbacks, sul- 
phur-bottoms, California grays, and even black 
fish, to practice their green hand crews. 

Captain .Winchester did not care particularly 
whether he took any sperm whales or not, though 



50 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

sperm oil is still valuable. The brig was not 
merely a blubber-hunter. Her hold was filled 
with oil tanks which it was hoped would be filled 
before we got back, but the chief purpose of the 
voyage was the capture of right and bowhead 
whales — the great baleen whales of the North. 

As soon as we left Turtle Bay, a lookout for 
whales was posted. During the day watches, a 
boatsteerer and a sailor sat on the topsail yard 
for two hours at a stretch and scanned the sea 
for spouts. We stood down the coast of Lower 
California and in a few days, were in the tide- 
rip which is always running off Cape St. Lucas, 
where the waters of the Pacific meet a counter- 
current from the Gulf of California. We 
rounded Cape St. Lucas and sailed north into 
the gulf, having a distant view of La Paz, a 
little town backed by gray mountains. Soon we 
turned south again, keeping close to the Mexican 
coast for several days. I never learned how far 
south we went, but we must have worked pretty 
well toward the equator, for when we stood out 
across the Pacific for the Hawaiian Islands, our 
course was northwesterly. 



TURTLES AND PORPOISES 51 

I saw my first whales one morning while work- 
ing in the bows with the watch under Mr. Lan- 
der's supervision. A school of finbacks was out 
ahead moving in leisurely fashion toward the 
brig. There were about twenty of them and the 
sea was dotted with their fountains. " Blow! " 
breathed old man Landers with mild interest as 
though to himself. "Blow!" boomed Captain 
Winchester in his big bass voice from the quarter- 
deck. " Nothin' but finbacks, sir," shouted the 
boatsteerer from the mast-head. "All right," 
sang back the captain. " Let 'em blow." It 
was easy for these old whalers even at this dis- 
tance to tell they were not sperm whales. Their 
fountains rose straight into the air. A sperm 
whale's spout slants up from the water diagon- 
ally. 

The whales were soon all about the ship, seem- 
ingly unafraid, still traveling leisurely, their 
heads rising and falling rhythmically, and at each 
rise blowing up a fountain of mist fifteen feet 
high. The fountains looked like water; some 
water surely was mixed with them; but I was 
told that the mist was the breath of the animals 



52 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

made visible by the colder air. The breath came 
from the blow holes in a sibilant roar that resem- 
bled no sound I had ever heard. If one can im- 
agine a giant of fable snoring in his sleep, one 
may have an idea of the sound of the mighty ex- 
halation. The great lungs whose gentle breath- 
ing could shoot a jet of spray fifteen feet into 
the air must have had the power of enormous 
bellows. 

Immense coal-black fellows these finbacks 
were — some at least sixty or seventy feet long. 
One swam so close to the brig that when he blew, 
the spray fell all about me, wetting my clothes 
like dew. The finback is a baleen whale and a 
cousin of the right whale and the bowhead. Their 
mouths are edged with close-set slabs of baleen, 
which, however, is so short that it is worthless for 
commercial purposes. They are of much slen- 
derer build than the more valuable species of 
whale. Their quickness and activity make them 
dangerous when hunted in the boats, but their 
bodies are encased in blubber so thin that it is 
as worthless as their bone. Consequently they 



TURTLES AND PORPOISES 53 

are not hunted unless a whaling ship is hard up 
for oil. 

We gradually worked into the trade winds that 
blew steadily from the southeast. These winds 
stayed with us for several weeks or rather we 
stayed with the winds ; while in them it was rarely 
necessary to take in or set a sail or brace a yard. 
After we had passed through these aerial rivers, 
flowing through definite, if invisible, banks, we 
struck the doldrums — areas of calm between 
wind currents — they might be called whirlpools 
of stillness. Later in the day light, fitful breezes 
finally pushed us through them into the region 
of winds again. 

The slow voyage to the Hawaiian islands — 
on the sperm whale grounds, we cruised under 
short sail — might have proved monotonous if we 
had not been kept constantly busy and if divert- 
ing incidents had not occurred almost every day. 
Once we sighted three immense turtles sunning 
themselves on the sea. To the captain they held 
out prospect of soups and delicate dishes for the 
cabin table, and with Long John as boatsteerer, 



54 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

a boat was lowered for them. I expected it 
would be difficult to get within darting distance. 
What was my surprise to see the turtles, with 
heads in the air and perfectly aware of their dan- 
ger, remain upon the surface until the boat was 
directly upon them. The fact was they could 
not go under quickly; the big shells kept them 
afloat. Long John dropped his harpoon crash- 
ing through the shell of one of the turtles, flopped 
it into the boat, and then went on without par- 
ticular hurry, and captured the other two in the 
same way. The cabin feasted for several days on 
the delicate flesh of the turtles ; the forecastle got 
only a savory smell from the galley, as was usual. 
We ran into a school of porpoises on another 
occasion — hundreds of them rolling and tumb- 
ling about the ship, like fat porkers on a frolic. 
Little Johnny took a position on the forecastle 
head with a harpoon, the line from which had 
been made fast to the fore-bitt. As a porpoise 
rose beneath him, he darted his harpoon straight 
into its back. The sea pig went wriggling un- 
der, leaving the water dyed with its blood. It was 
hauled aboard, squirming and twisting. Little 



TURTLES AND PORPOISES 55 

Johnny harpooned two more before the school 
took fright and disappeared. The porpoises 
were cleaned and some of their meat, nicely 
roasted, was sent to the forecastle. It made fine 
eating, tasting something like beef. 

The steward was an inveterate fisherman and 
constantly kept a baited hook trailing in the brig's 
wake, the line tied to the taff-rail. He caught 
a great many bonitos and one day landed a dol- 
phin. yVe had seen many of these beautiful fish 
swimming about the ship — long, graceful and 
looking like an animate streak of blue sky. The 
steward's dolphin was about five feet long. I 
had often seen in print the statement that dol- 
phins turned all colors of the rainbow in dying 
and I had as often seen the assertion branded 
as a mere figment of poetic imagination. Our 
dolphin proved the truth of the poetic tradition. 
As life departed, it changed from blue to green, 
bronze, salmon, gold, and gray, making death as 
beautiful as a gorgeous kaleidoscope. 

We saw flying fish every day — great " coveys " 
of them, one may say. They frequently flew 
several hundred yards, fluttering their webbed 



56 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

side fins like the wings of a bird, sometimes rising 
fifteen to twenty feet above the water, and curv- 
ing and zigzagging in their flight. More than 
once they flew directly across the ship and sev- 
eral fell on deck. I was talking with Kaiuli, the 
Kanaka, one night when we heard a soft little 
thud on deck. I should have paid no attention 
but Kaiuli was alert on the instant. " Flying 
feesh," he cried zestfully and rushed off to search 
the deck. He found the fish and ate it raw. 
smacking his lips over it with great gusto. The 
Hawaiian islanders, he told me, esteem raw fly- 
ing fish a great delicacy. 

I never saw water so " darkly, deeply, beauti- 
fully blue " as in the middle of the Pacific where 
we had some four miles of water under us. It 
was as blue as indigo. At night, the sea seemed 
afire with riotous phosphorescence. White 
flames leaped about the bows where the brig cut 
the water before a fresh breeze; the wake was a 
broad, glowing path. When white caps were 
running every wave broke in sparks and tongues 
of flame, and the ocean presented the appearance 
of a prairie swept by fire. A big shark came 



TURTLES AND PORPOISES 57 

swimming about the ship one night and it shone 

like a living incandescence — a silent, ghost-like 

shape slowly gliding under the brig and out 

again. 
The idle night watches in the tropics were 

great times for story telling. The deep-water 
sailors were especially fond of this way of pass- 
ing the time. While the green hands were en- 
gaging in desultory talk and wishing for the bell 
to strike to go back to their bunks, these deep- 
water fellows would be pacing up and down or 
sitting on deck against the bulwarks, smoking 
their pipes and spinning yarns to each other. 
The stories as a rule were interminable and were 
full of " Then he says " and " Then the other fel- 
low says." It was a poor story that did not last 
out a four-hour watch and many of them were 
regular " continued in our next " serials, being 
cut short at the end of one watch to be resumed 
in the next. 

No matter how long-winded or prosy the nara- 
tive, the story teller was always sure of an au- 
dience whose attention never flagged for an in- 
stant. The boyish delight of these full-grown 



58 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

men in stories amazed me. I had never seen 
anything like it. Once in a while a tale was told 
that was worth listening to, but most of them were 
monotonously uninteresting. They bored me. 



CHAPTER V 

THE A, Bj C OF WHALES 

ON"E damp morning, with frequent showers 
falling here and there over the sea and not 
a drop wetting the brig, Captain Win- 
chester suddenly stopped pacing up and down 
the weather side of the quarter-deck, threw his 
head up into the wind, and sniffed the air. 

" There's sperm whale about as sure as I live," 
he said to Mr. Landers. " I smell 'em." 

Mr. Landers inhaled the breeze through his 
nose in jerky little sniffs. 

" No doubt about it," he replied. " You could 
cut the smell with a knife." 

I was at the wheel and overheard this talk. I 
smiled. These old sea dogs, I supposed, were 
having a little joke. The skipper saw the grin 
on my face. 

59 



60 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

" Humph, you don't believe I smell whale, 
eh? " he said. " I can smell whale like a bird 
dog smells quail. Take a sniff at the wind. 
Can't you smell it yourself?" 

I gave a few hopeful sniffs. 

" No," I said, " I can't smell anything unless, 
perhaps, salt water." 

" You've got a poor smeller," returned the cap- 
tain. " The wind smells rank and oily. That 
means sperm whale. If I couldn't smell it, I 
could taste it. I'll give you a plug of tobacco, 
if we don't raise sperm before dark." 

He didn't have to pay the tobacco. Within 
an hour, we raised a sperm whale spouting far 
to windward and traveling in the same direction 
as the brig. The captain hurried to the cabin 
for his binoculars. As he swung himself into the 
shrouds to climb to the mast-head, he shouted to 
me, " Didn't I tell you I could smell 'em? " The 
watch was called. The crew of the captain's 
boat was left to work the ship and Mr. Landers 
and Gabriel lowered in the larboard and waist 
boats. Sails were run up and we went skimming 
away on our first whale hunt. We had a long 



THE A, B, C, OF WHALES 61 

beat to windward ahead of us and as the whale 
was moving along at fair speed, remaining below 
fifteen minutes or so between spouts, it was slow 
work cutting down the distance that separated 
us from it. 

" See how dat spout slant up in de air?" re- 
marked old Gabriel whom the sight of our first 
sperm had put in high good humor. 

We looked to where the whale was blowing 
and saw its fountain shoot into the air diagonally, 
tufted with a cloudy spread of vapor at the top. 

" You know why it don't shoot straight up? " 

No one knew. 

" Dat feller's blow hole in de corner ob his 
square head — dat's why," said Gabriel. "He 
blow his fountain out in front of him. Ain't no 
udder kind o' whale do dat. All de udder kind 
blow straight up. All de differ in de worl' be- 
tween dat sperm whale out dere and de bowhead 
and right whale up nort'. Ain't shaped nothin' 
a-tall alike. Bowhead and right whale got big 
curved heads and big curved backs. Sperm 
whale's about one-third head and his back ain't 
got no bow to it — not much — jest lies straight 



62 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

out behind his head. He look littler in de water 
dan de right and bowhead whale. But he ain't. 
He's as big as de biggest whale dat swims de sea. 
I've seen a 150 barrel sperm dat measure seventy 
feet. 

"Blow!" added the old negro as he caught 
sight of the whale spouting again. 

" Bowhead and right whale got no teeth," he 
continued. " Dey got only long slabs o' baleen 
hung wit' hair in de upper jaw. Sperm whale 
got teeth same as you and me — about twenty on 
a side and all in his lower jaw. Ain't got no 
teeth in his upper jaw a-tall. His mouth is white 
inside and his teeth stand up five or six inches 
out o' his gums and are wide apart and sharp 
and pointed and look jes' like de teeth of a saw. 
Wen he open his mouth, his lower jaw fall 
straight down and his mouth's big enough to 
take a whale boat inside. 

" Sperm whale's fightin' whale. He fight wit' 
his tail and his teeth*. He knock a boat out de 
water wit' his flukes and he scrunch it into kind- 
lin' wood wit' his teeth. He's got fightin' sense 
too — he's sly as a fox. Wen I was young fel- 



THE A, B, C, OF WHALES 63 

ler, I was in de sperm trade mysel' and used to 
ship out o' New Bedford round Cape o' Good 
Hope for sperm whale ground in Indian Ocean 
and Sout' Pacific. Once I go on top a sperm 
whale in a boat an' he turn flukes and lash out 
wit' his tail but miss us. Den he bring up his 
old head and take a squint back at us out o' his 
foxy little eye and begin to slew his body roun' 
till he get his tail under de boat. But de boat- 
header too smart fer him and we stern oars and 
get out o' reach. But de whale didn't know we 
done backed out o' reach and w'en he bring up 
dat tail it shoot out o' de water like it was shot 
out o' a cannon. Mighty fine fer us he miss us 
dat time. 

" But dat don't discourage dat whale a-tall. 
He swim round and slew round and sight at us 
out o' his eye and at las' he get under de boat. 
Den he lift it on de tip o' his tail sky-high and 
pitch us all in de water. Dat was jes' what he 
been working for. He swim away and turn round 
and come shootin' back straight fer dat boat and 
w'en he get to it, he crush it wit' his teeth and 
chew it up and shake his head like a mad bulldog 



64 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

until dere warn't nothin' left of dat boat but a 
lot o' kindlin' wood. But dat warn't all. He 
swim to a man who wuz lying across an oar to 
keep afloat and he chew dat man up and spit 
him out in liT pieces and we ain't never see 
nothin' o' dat feller again. 

" Guess that whale was goin' to give us all de 
same medicine, but he ain't have time. De ud- 
der boats come up and fill him full o' harpoons 
and keep stickin' der lances into him and kill 
him right where he lays and he never had no 
chance to scoff the rest o' us. But if it ain't fer 
dem boats, I guess dat feller eat us all jes' like 
plum duff. Sperm whale, some fighter, believe 
me. 

" Dere he white waters — blow ! " added Gab- 
riel as the whale came to the surface again. 

" Sperm whale try out de bes' oil," the garru- 
lous old whaleman went on. " Bowhead and 
right whale got thicker blubber and make more 
oil, but sperm whale oil de bes'. He got big 
cistern — what dey call a ' case ' — in de top ob 
his head and it's full o* spermaceti, sloshing about 
in dere and jes' as clear as water. His old head 



THE A, B, C, OF WHALES 65 

is always cut off and hoist on deck to bale put 
dat case. Many times dey find ambergrease 
(ambergis) floating beside a dead sperm whale. 
It's solid and yellowish and stuck full o' cuttle 
feesh beaks dat de whale's done swallowed but 
ain't digest. Dey makes perfume out o' dat am- 
bergrease and it's worth its weight in gold. I've 
offen seen it in chunks dat weighed a hundred 
pounds. 

" You see a sperm whale ain't eat nothin' but 
cuttle feesh — giant squid, dey calls 'em, or devil 
feesh. Dey certainly is terrible fellers — is dem 
devil feesh. Got arms twenty or thirty feet long 
wit' sucking discs all over 'em and a big fat body 
in de middle ob dese snaky arms, wit' big pop- 
eyes as big as water buckets and a big black beak 
like a parrot's to tear its food wit'. Dose devil 
feesh. Dey certainly is terrible fellers — is dem 
sperm whale nose 'em out and eat 'em. Some 
time dey comes to de top and de whale and de 
cuttle feesh fights it out. I've hearn old whal- 
ers say dey seen fights between sperm whale and 
cuttle feesh but I ain't never seen dat and I 
reckon mighty few fellers ever did. But when 



66 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

a sperm whale is killed, he spews out chunks o' 
cuttle feesh and I've seen de water about a dead 
sperm thick wit' white chunks of cuttle feesh as 
big as a sea ches' and wit' de suckin' disc still 
on 'em. 

"Blow!" said Gabriel again with his eyes on 
the whale. " Dat feesh certainly some traveler." 

We were hauling closer to the whale. I could 
see it distinctly by this time and could note how 
square and black its head was. Its appearance 
might be compared not inaptly to a box-car glis- 
tening in the sun under a fresh coat of black 
paint. It did not cut the water but pushed it in 
white foam in front of it. 

" Sperm pretty scarce nowadays," Gabriel re- 
sumed. " Nothing like as plentiful in Pacific 
waters as dey used to be in de ole days. Whalers 
done pretty well thinned 'em out. But long 
ago, it used to be nothin' to see schools of a 
hundred, mostly cows wit' three or four big bulls 
among 'em." 

" Any difference between a bowhead and a 
right whale? " some one asked. 

"O good Lord, yes," answered Gabriel. 



THE A, E, C, OF WHALES 67 

" Big difference. Right whale thinner whale dan 
a bowhead, ain't got sech thick blubber neither. 
He's quicker in de water and got nothin' like 
such long baleen. ,You ketch right whale in 
Behring Sea. I ain't never see none in de Arc- 
tic Ocean. You ketch bowhead both places. 
Right whale flghtin' feesh, too, but he ain't so 
dangerous as a sperm." 

Let me add that I give this statement of the 
old whaleman for what it is worth. All books 
I have ever read on the subject go on the theory 
that the Greenland or right whale is the same 
animal as the bowhead. .We lowered for a right 
whale later in the voyage in Behring Sea. To 
my untrained eyes, it looked like a bowhead 
which we encountered every few days while on 
the Arctic Ocean whaling grounds. But there 
was no doubt or argument about it among the 
old whalemen aboard. To them it was a " right 
whale " and nothing else. Old Gabriel may 
have known what he was talking about. De- 
spite the naturalists, whalers certainly make a 
pronounced distinction. 

By the time Gabriel had imparted all this in- 



68 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

formation, we had worked to within a half mile 
of our whale which was still steaming along at 
the rate of knots. They say a sperm whale has 
ears so small they are scarcely detected, but it 
has a wonderfully keen sense of hearing for all 
that. Our whale must have heard us or seen us. 
At any rate it bade us a sudden goodbye and 
scurried off unceremoniously over the rim of the 
world. The boats kept on along the course it 
was heading for over an hour, but the whale never 
again favored us with so much as a distant spout. 
Finally signals from the brig's mast-head sum- 
moned us aboard. 

As the men had had no practice in the boats 
before, both boats lowered sail and we started to 
row back to the vessel. We had pulled about 
a mile when Mendez, who was acting as boat- 
steerer, said quietly, "Blow! Blackfish dead 
ahead." 

" Aye, aye," replied Gabriel. " Now stand 
by, Tomas. I'll jes' lay you aboard one o' dem 
blackfeesh and we'll teach dese green fellers 
somethin' 'bout whalin\" 

There were about fifty blackfish in the school. 



THE A, B, C, OF WHALES 69 

They are a species of small toothed whale, from 
ten to twenty feet long, eight or ten feet in cir- 
cumference and weighing two or three tons. 
They were gamboling and tumbling like por- 
poises. Their black bodies flashed above the sur- 
face in undulant curves and I wondered if, when 
seen at a distance, these little cousins of the sperm 
had not at some time played their part in estab- 
lishing the myth of the sea serpent. 

" Get ready, Tomas," said Gabriel as we drew 
near the school. 

"Aye, aye, sir," responded Mendez. 

Pulling away as hard as we could, we shot 
among the blackfish. Mendez selected a big one 
and drove his harpoon into its back. Almost at 
the same time Mr. Lander's boat became fast to 
another. Our fish plunged and reared half out 
of water, rolled and splashed about, finally shot 
around in a circle and died. Mr. Lander's fish 
was not fatally hit and when it became apparent 
it would run away with a tub of line, Little 
Johnny, the boatsteerer, cut adrift and let it go. 
Mendez cut our harpoon free and left our fish 
weltering on the water. Blackfish yield a fairly 



70 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

good quality of oil, but one was too small a catch 
to potter with. Our adventure among the black- 
fish was merely practice for the boat crews to 
prepare them for future encounters with the 
monarchs of the deep. 



CHAPTER VI 



THE NIGHT KING 



THE crew called Tomas Mendez, the acting 
third mate, the " Night King." I have 
forgotten what forecastle poet fastened the 
name upon him, but it fitted like a glove. In 
the day watches when the captain and mate were 
on deck, he was only a quite, unobtrusive little 
negro, insignificant in size and with a bad case 
of rheumatism. But at night when the other of- 
ficers were snoring in their bunks below and the 
destinies of the brig were in his hands, he be- 
came an autocrat who ruled with a hand of 
iron. 

He was as black as a bowhead's skin — a lean, 
scrawny, sinewy little man, stooped about the 
shoulders and walking with a slight limp. His 

countenance was imperious. His lips were thin 

71 



72 A YEAR WITH, A WHALER 

and cruel. His eyes were sharp and sinister. 
His ebony skin was drawn so tightly over the 
frame-work of his face that it almost seemed as 
if it would crack when he smiled. His nose had 
a domineering Roman curve. He carried his 
head high. In profile, this little blackamoor 
suggested the mummied head of some old Pha- 
roah. 

He was a native of the Cape Verde islands. 
He spoke English with the liquid burr of a Latin. 
His native tongue was Portuguese. No glim- 
mer of education relieved his mental darkness. 
It was as though his outside color went all the 
way through. He could neither read nor write, 
but he was a good sailor and no better whaleman 
ever handled a harpoon or laid a boat on a whale's 
back. For twenty years he had been sailing as 
boatsteerer on whale ships, and to give the devil 
his due, he had earned a name for skill and 
courage in a thousand adventures among sperm, 
bowhead, and right whales in tropical and frozen 
seas. 

My first impression of the Night King stands 
out in my memory with cameo distinctness. In 




PC 



THE NIGHT KINa 73 

the bustle and confusion of setting sails, just af- 
ter the tug had cut loose from us outside Golden 
Gate heads, I saw Mendez, like an ebony statue, 
standing in the waist of the ship, an arm rest- 
ing easily on the bulwarks, singing out orders 
in a clear, incisive voice that had in it the ring 
of steel. 

When I shipped, it had not entered my mind 
that any but white men would be of the ship's 
company. It was with a shock like a blow in the 
face that I saw this little colored man singing 
out orders. I wondered in a dazed sort of way 
if he was to be in authority over me. I was not 
long in doubt. When calm had succeeded the 
first confusion and the crew had been divided 
into watches, Captain Winchester announced 
from the break of the poop that " Mr." Mendez 
would head the port watch. That was my 
watch. While the captain was speaking, " Mr." 
Mendez stood like a black Napoleon and sur- 
veyed us long and silently. Then suddenly he 
snapped out a decisive order and the white men 
jumped to obey. The Night King had assumed 
his throne. 



74 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

The Night King and I disliked each other from 
the start. It may seem petty now that it's all 
past, but I raged impotently in the bitterness of 
outraged pride at being ordered about by this 
black overlord of the quarter-deck. He was not 
slow to discover my smoldering resentment and 
came to hate me with a cordiality not far from 
classic. He kept me busy with some silly job 
when the other men were smoking their pipes 
and spinning yarns. If I showed the left-hand- 
edness of a landlubber in sailorizing he made me 
stay on deck my watch below to learn the ropes. 
If there was dirt or litter to be shoveled over- 
board, he sang out for me. 

" Clean up dat muck dere, you," he would say 
with fine contempt. 

The climax of his petty tyrannies came one 
night on the run to Honolulu when he charged 
me with some trifling infraction of ship's rules, 
of which I was not guilty, and ordered me aloft 
to sit out the watch on the fore yard. The yard 
was broad, the night was warm, the ship was trav- 
eling on a steady keel, and physically the pun- 
ishment was no punishment at all. There was 



THE NIGHT KING 75 

no particular ignominy in the thing, either, for 
it was merely a joke to the sailors. The sting of 
it was in having to take such treatment from this 
small colored person without being able to resent 
it or help myself. 

The very next morning I was awakened by 
the cry of the lookout on the topsail yard. 

"Blow! Blow! There's his old head. 
Bio — o — o — w! There he ripples. There goes 
flukes." Full-lunged and clear, the musical cry 
came from aloft like a song with little yodling 
breaks in the measure. It was the view-halloo 
jof the sea, and it quickened the blood and set 
the nerves tingling. 

" Where away? " shouted the captain, rushing 
from the cabin with his binoculars. 

" Two points on the weather bow, sir," re- 
turned the lookout. 

For a moment nothing was to be seen but an 
expanse of yeasty sea. Suddenly into the air 
shot a fountain of white water — slender, grace- 
ful, spreading into a bush of spray at the top. 
A great sperm was disporting among the white 
caps. 



76 A YEAR WITH? A!, WHALER 

" Call all hands and clear away the boats," 
yelled the captain. 

Larboard and waist boats were lowered from 
the davits. Their crews scrambled over the ship's 
side, the leg-o'-mutton sails were hoisted, and the 
boats, bending over as the wind caught them, 
sped away on the chase. The Night King went 
as boatsteerer of the waist boat. I saw him 
smiling to himself as he shook the kinks out of his 
tub-line and laid his harpoons in position in the 
bows — harpoons with no bomb-guns attached to 
"the spear-shanks. 

In the distance, a slow succession of fountains 
gleamed in the brilliant tropical sunshine like 
crystal lamps held aloft on fairy pillars. Sud- 
denly the tell-tale beacons of spray went out. 
The whale had sounded. Over the sea, the boats 
quartered like baffled foxhounds to pick up the 
lost trail. 

Between the ship and the boats, the whale 
came quietly to the surface at last and lay per- 
fectly still, taking its ease, sunning itself and 
spouting lazily. The captain, perched in the 
ship's cross-trees, signalled its position with flags, 



THE NIGHT KING 77 

using a code familiar to whalemen. The Night 
King caught the message first. He turned 
quickly to the boatheader at the tiller and 
pointed. Instantly the boat came about, the sail- 
ors shifted from one gunwale to the other, the 
big sail swung squarely out and filled. All hands 
settled themselves for the run to close quarters. 
With thrilling interest, I watched the hunt 
from the ship's forward bulwarks, where I stood 
grasping a shroud to prevent pitching overboard. 
Down a long slant of wind, the boat ran free with 
the speed of a greyhound, a white plume of spray 
standing high on either bow. The Night King 
stood alert and cool, one foot on the bow seat, 
balancing a harpoon in his hands. The white 
background of the bellying sail threw his tense 
figure into relief. Swiftly, silently, the boat 
stole upon its quarry until but one long sea lay 
between. It rose upon the crest of the wave and 
poised there for an instant like some great white- 
winged bird of prey. Then sweeping down the 
green slope, it struck the whale bows-on and 
beached its keel out of the water on its glistening 
back. As it struck, the Night King let fly one 



78 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

harpoon and another, driving them home up to 
the wooden hafts with all the strength of his 
lithe arms. 

The sharp bite of the iron in its vitals stirred 
the titanic mass of flesh and blood from perfect 
stillness into a frenzy of sudden movement that 
churned the water of the sea into white froth. 
The great head went under, the giant back curved 
down like the whirling surface of some mighty; 
fly-wheel, the vast flukes, like some black demon's 
arm, shot into the air. Left and right and left 
again, the great tail thrashed, smiting the sea 
with thwacks which could have been heard for 
miles. It struck the boat glancingly with its bare 
tip, yet the blow stove a great hole in the bottom 
timbers, lifted the wreck high in air, and sent the 
sailors sprawling into the sea. Then the whale 
sped away with the speed of a limited express. 
It had not been vitally wounded. Over the dis- 
tant horizon, it passed out of sight, blowing up 
against the sky fountains of clear water unmixed 
with blood. 

The other boat hurried to the rescue and the 
cveWi gathered up the half-drowned sailors 



THE NIGHT KING 79 

perched on the bottom of the upturned boat or 
clinging to floating sweeps. Fouled in the rig- 
ging of the sail, held suspended beneath the 
wreck in the green crystal of the sea water, they 
found the Night King, dead. 

When the whale crushed the boat — at the very 
moment, it must have been — the Night King had 
snatched the knife kept fastened in a sheath on 
the bow thwart and with one stroke of the razor 
blade, severed the harpoon lines. He thus re- 
leased the whale and prevented it from dragging 
the boat away in its mad race. The Night 
King's last act had saved the lives of his com- 
panions. 

I helped lift the body over the rail. We laid 
it on the quarter deck near the skylight. It 
lurched and shifted in a ghastly sort of way as 
the ship rolled, the glazed eyes open to the blue 
sky. The captain's Newfoundland dog came 
and sniffed at the corpse. Sheltered from the 
captain's eye behind the galley, the Kanaka cabin 
boy shook a furtive fist at the dead man and 
ground out between clenched teeth, " You black 
devil, you'll never kick me again." Standing not 



80 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

ten feet away, the mate cracked a joke to the 
second mate and the two laughed uproariously. 
The work of the ship went on all around. 

Looking upon the dead thing lying there, I 
thought of the pride with which the living man 
had borne himself in the days of his power. I 
beheld in fancy the silent, lonely, imperious lit- 
tle figure, pacing to and fro on the weather side 
of the quarter-deck — to and fro under the stars. 
I saw him stop in the darkness by the wheel, 
as his custom was, to peer down into the lighted 
binnacle and say in vibrant tones, " Keep her 
steady," or " Let her luff." I saw him buttoned 
up in his overcoat to keep the dew of the tropical 
night from his rheumatic joints, slip down the 
poop ladder and stump forward past the try- 
works to see how things fared in the bow. Again 
I heard his nightly cry to the lookout on the fore- 
castle-head, " Keep a bright lookout dere, you," 
and saw him limp back to continue his vigil, 
pacing up and down. The qualities that had 
made him hated when he was indeed the Night 
King flooded back upon me, but I did not forget 
the courage of my enemy that had redeemed 



THE NIGHT KING 81 

them all and made him a hero in the hour of 
death. 

In the afternoon, old Nelson sat on the deck 
beside the corpse and with palm and needle fash- 
ioned a long canvas bag. Into this the dead man 
was sewed with a weight of brick and sand at his 
feet. 

At sunset, when all hands were on deck for the 
dog watch, they carried the body down on the 
main deck and with feet to the sea, laid it on 
the gang-plank which had been removed from 
the rail. There in the waist the ship's company 
gathered with uncovered heads. Over all was 
the light of the sunset, flushing the solemn, rough 
faces and reddening the running white-caps of 
the sea. The captain called me to him and 
placed a Bible in my hands. 

" Read a passage of scripture," he said. 

Dumbfounded that I should be called upon to 
officiate at the burial service over the man I had 
hated, I took my stand on the main hatch at 
the head of the body and prepared to obey or- 
ders. No passage to fit my singular situation 
occurred to me and I opened the book at random. 



82 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

The leaves fell apart at the seventh chapter of 
Matthew and I read aloud the section beginning : 

" Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with 
what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; 
and with what measure ye mete, it shall be meas- 
ured to you again." 

At the close of the reading the captain called 
for " The Sweet Bye and Bye " and the crew 
sang the verses of the old hymn solemnly. When 
the full-toned music ceased, two sailors tilted the 
gang-plank upwards and the remains of the 
Night King slid off and plunged into the ocean. 

As the body slipped toward the water, a Ka- 
naka sailor caught up a bucket of slop which he 
had set aside for the purpose, and dashed its 
filth over the corpse from head to foot. Wide- 
eyed with astonishment, I looked to see instant 
punishment visited upon this South Sea heathen 
who so flagrantly violated the sanctities of the 
dead. But not a hand was raised, not a word of 
disapproval was uttered. The Kanaka had but 
followed a whaler's ancient custom. The part- 
ing insult to the dead was meant to discourage 
the ghost from ever coming back to haunt the 
brig. 



CHAPTER VII 

DREAMS OF LIBERTY 

AT midnight after the burial, we raised the 
volcanic fire of Mauna Loa dead ahead. 
Sailors declare that a gale always follows 
a death at sea and the wind that night blew hard. 
But we cracked on sail and next morning we 
were gliding in smooth water along the shore of 
the island of Hawaii with the great burning 
mountain towering directly over us and the 
smoke from the crater swirling down through 
our rigging. 

We loafed away three pleasant weeks among 
the islands, loitering along the beautiful sea 
channels, merely killing time until Captain 
Shorey should arrive from San Francisco by 
steamer. Once we sailed within distant view of 
Molokai. It was as beautiful in its tropical ver- 
dure as any of the other islands of the group, 

83 



84 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

but its very name was fraught with sinister and 
tragic suggestiveness ; — it was the home of the 
lepers, the island of the Living Death. 

We did not anchor at any time. None of the 
whaling fleet which meets here every spring ever 
anchors. The lure of the tropical shores is strong 
and there would be many desertions if the ships 
lay in port. We sailed close to shore in the day 
time, often entering Honolulu harbor, but at 
night we lay off and on, as the sailor term is — 
that is we tacked off shore and back again, rarely 
venturing closer than two or three miles, a dis- 
tance the hardiest swimmer, bent upon desertion, 
would not be apt to attempt in those shark- 
haunted waters. 

Many attempts to escape from vessels of the 
whaling fleet occur in the islands every year. We 
heard many yarns of these adventures. A week 
before we arrived, five sailors had overpowered 
the night watch aboard their ship and escaped to 
shore in a whale boat. They were captured in 
the hills back of Honolulu and returned to their 
vessel. This is usually the fate of runaways. A 



DREAMS OF LIBERTY 85 

standing reward of $25 a man is offered by whal- 
ing ships for the capture and return of deserters, 
consequently all the natives of the islands, es- 
pecially the police, are constantly on the lookout 
for runaways from whaling crews. 

When we drew near the islands the runaway 
fever became epidemic in the forecastle. Each 
sailor had his own little scheme for getting away. 
Big Taylor talked of knocking the officers of 
the night watch over the head with a belaying- 
pin and stealing ashore in a boat. Ole Oleson cut 
up his suit of oilskins and sewed them into two 
air-tight bags with one of which under each arm, 
he proposed to float ashore. Bill White, an 
Englishman, got possession of a lot of canvas 
from the cabin and was clandestinely busy for 
days making it into a boat in which he fondly 
hoped to paddle ashore some fine night in the 
dark of the moon. " Slim," our Irish grenadier, 
stuffed half his belongings into his long sea-boots 
which he planned to press into service both as 
carry-alls and life-preservers. Peter Swenson, 
the forecastle's baby boy, plugged up some big 



86 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

empty oil cans and made life buoys of them by 
fastening a number of them together. 

Just at the time when the forecastle conspi- 
racies were at their height we killed a thirteen- 
foot shark off Diamond Head. Our catch was 
one of a school of thirty or forty monsters that 
came swarming about the brig, gliding slowly 
like gray ghosts only a few feet below the sur- 
face, nosing close to the ship's side for garbage 
and turning slightly on their sides to look out of 
their evil eyes at the sailors peering down upon 
them over the rail. Long John, the boat-steerer, 
got out a harpoon, and standing on the bulwarks 
shot the iron up to the wooden haft into the 
back of one of the sharks, the spear-point of the 
weapon passing through the creature and stick- 
ing out on the under side. The stout manila 
hemp attached to the harpoon had been made 
fast to the fore bitt. It was well that this was 
so, for the shark plunged and fought with terrific 
fury, lashing the sea into white froth. But the 
harpoon had pierced a vital part and in a little 
while the great fish ceased its struggles and lay 
still, belly up on the surface. 



DREAMS OF LIBERTY 87 

It was hauled close alongside, and a boat hav- 
ng been lowered, a large patch of the shark's 
skin was cut off. Then the carcass was cut 
adrift. The skin was as rough as sandpaper. It 
was cut into small squares, which were used in 
scouring metal and for all the polishing purposes 
for which sandpaper serves ashore. 

Life aboard the brig seemed less intolerable 
thereafter, and an essay at escape through 
waters infested by such great, silent, ravenous 
sea-wolves seemed a hazard less desirable than 
before. Taylor talked no more about slugging 
the night watch. Slim unpacked his sea-boots 
and put his effects back into his chest. Peter 
threw his plugged oil cans overboard. Bill 
White turned his canvas boat into curtains for 
his bunk, and Ole Oleson voiced in the lilting 
measure of Scandinavia his deep regret that he 
had cut up a valuable suit of oil-skins. 

The captain of one of the whaling ships came 
one afternoon to visit our skipper and his small 
boat was left dragging in our wake as the brig 
skimmed along under short sail. It occurred to 
me, and at the same time to my two Kanaka 



88 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

shipmates, that here was a fine opportunity to 
escape. It was coming on dusk, and if we could 
get into the boat and cut loose we might have a 
splendid chance to get away. The Kanakas and 
I climbed over the bow, intending to let our- 
selves into the sea and drift astern to the boat, 
but the breeze had freshened and the brig was 
traveling so fast we did not believe we could 
catch the boat; and if we failed to do so, we 
might confidently expect the sharks to finish us. 
We abandoned the plan after we had remained 
squatting on the stays over the bow for a half 
hour considering our chances and getting soaked 
to the skin from the dashing spray. 

A pathetic incident grew out of the visit of 
the captain from the other ship. Tomas Men- 
dez's brother, a boat-steerer, came aboard with 
the boat's crew. He was a young negro whom 
all the boat-steerers and officers knew. He came 
swinging lightly over our rail, laughing and 
happy over the prospect of seeing his brother. 

" Hello, fellers," he called to the Portuguese 
officers and boat-steerers who welcomed him. 
"Where's my brudder?" 



DREAMS OF LIBERTY 89 

" Dead, my boy," said one of the boat-steerers 
gently. 

"Dead?" echoed Mendez. 

He staggered back. When he had heard the 
details of his brother's death, he burst into tears. 
All the time his skipper remained aboard, the 
poor fellow stood by the cooper's bench and 
sobbed. 

While drifting at the mouth of Honolulu har- 
bor one morning, Captain Winchester called for 
a boat's crew to row him ashore. All hands 
wanted to go. I was one of the lucky ones to 
be chosen. The morning was calm and beau- 
tiful, the water was smooth, and we pulled away 
with a will. 

The city looked inviting at the foot of its 
green mountains, its quaint houses embowered in 
tropical foliage. On our starboard beam rose 
the fine, bold promontory of Diamond Head, 
and in between the headland and the city lay 
Waikiki, the fashionable bathing beach. We 
could see the bathers taking the surf in the 
bright morning sunlight, while beyond stretched 
a delectable wooded country, above the tops of 



90 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

whose trees peeped manors and villas of wealthy 
citizens. 

We reached the long pier at last and tied up 
the boat. While the captain went into the city 
the sailors remained on the dock in charge of 
Long John, the boat-steerer. Three snaky-eyed 
Kanaka policemen in blue uniforms hung about, 
watching our every movement. We were not 
allowed to stir off the dock. There was a street 
corner within a stone's throw. A little red brick 
store stood upon it. A lazy Kanaka lounged 
against the building, smoking a cigarette. That 
corner fascinated me. If I only could dodge 
around it! How near it seemed, and yet how 
unattainable ! 

But if we sailormen could not get into town, 
We at least had the freedom of the long pier. 
This was several hundred feet long and piled 
thick with freight of all descriptions, which shut 
its harbor end from view. With a casual and 
indifferent air I sauntered out along the pier. 
In a moment I was hidden behind the merchan- 
dise from the unsuspecting Long John and 



DREAMS OF LIBERTY 91 

the policemen. I soon reached the harbor end. 
I saw that a sharp curve in the shore line brought 
the part of the pier on which I was standing close 
to land. It seemed easy to dive off the pier, swim 
past a big four-masted English ship unloading 
alongside, gain the land, and escape to the cane 
fields which swept up to the edge of the city. 

I sat down behind some freight and began to 
take off my shoes. I had one off when a bare- 
footed Kanaka suddenly stepped into view from 
behind a pile of bales and boxes. He was tip- 
toeing and peering about him furtively. I knew 
him for a spy instantly. Directly he saw me 
staring at him he looked as guilty as one taken 
in crime, and slunk away sheepishly. I knew he 
was on his way to inform on me and made up my 
mind not to get my clothes wet by any hopeless 
attempt to run away. 

I put my shoe back on and strolled back to- 
ward the boat. I saw one of my shipmates — it 
was Richard, the deep-water German sailor — 
walking up the gangplank of the English ship 
alongside the dock. I followed him. When we 



92 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

reached the deck, we saw a gang of sailors work- 
ing about an open hatch. 

" Hello, mates," said Richard. " We are mer- 
chant seamen and want to clear out from a 
blooming whaler. Stow us away, won't you? " 

The sailors didn't seem to take kindly to the 
proposition. Perhaps they were afraid of get- 
ting into trouble. But they told us we might go 
down in the fore-peak of the ship and stow our- 
selves away. Richard and I climbed down three 
decks and found ourselves in the chain lockers 
deep in the ship's bow. It was pitch dark down 
there and we lay upon the ship's cable in the 
farthest corners. For three hours we huddled 
there in silence. 

Just when we were beginning to congratulate 
ourselves that our escape would be successful, the 
hatch was pulled off suddenly and three Kanaka 
policemen with drawn clubs came leaping down 
upon us. 

" Come out of this, you," they yelled, swearing 
at us and brandishing their billets. The jig was 
up; resistance would have got us only broken 
heads. We were led upon deck and escorted to- 



DREAMS OF LIBERTY 93 

ward the gangway for the pier. But I was for 
one more try before giving up. Suddenly I 
darted for the rail on the harbor side of the ship. 
We were in the waist and the bulwarks reached 
about to my breast. Before the Kanaka police- 
men had recovered from their surprise I had 
plunged head first over the rail and dived into 
the water twenty or thirty feet below. When I 
came to the surface I struck out for shore with 
all my might. It was only a short swim. I soon 
made the land and dragged myself, dripping 
brine, out upon a beach. 

I glanced toward the pier. The policemen, 
with a crowd at their backs, were dashing for me 
along shore. I started for the cane fields, but in 
my wet and heavy clothes I stumbled along as 
if there was lead in my shoes. Perhaps I ran a 
quarter of a mile. My pursuers gained on me 
steadily. I was drawing near a cane field, in 
which I felt I should be able to lose myself; but 
before reaching it, my pursuers sprang upon me 
and bore me to the ground. Then, with a police- 
man on either side of me, I was marched back to 
the brig's boat. 



94 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

The populace had turned out royally in my 
honor and I passed through a lane of brown 
humanity that bent round eyes upon me and 
chortled and spluttered Kanaka and seemed to 
get a huge amount of enjoyment out of my cap- 
ture. As my captors paraded me onto the pier, 
who should be there waiting for me but Captain 
Shorey, our new skipper, just arrived from San 
Francisco by steamer. He stood with feet wide 
apart and arms folded on his breast and looked 
at me steadily with stern, cold eyes. In my wet 
clothes I cut a sorry figure. I felt ashamed of 
myself and realized that this introduction to my 
new captain was not all it should have been. 
Captain Winchester had nothing to say to Rich- 
ard and me on the long pull back to the brig. 
Once aboard, he drew a pint of Jamaica rum 
from his pocket and gave every man of the boat's 
crew, except us, a swig. But no penalty of any 
sort was imposed upon us for our escapade. 
This surprised us. 



CHAPTER yill 



gabeiel's little drama 



ON" a bright, sunshiny morning a few days 
later, with a light breeze just ruffling the 
harbor, the brig with her sails laid back 
and her head pointed seaward was drifting with 
the ebb tide perhaps a mile and a quarter off 
shore between Honolulu and Diamond Head. 
Captain Winchester had set out for the city in 
a whale boat. Those of the sailors left aboard 
were idling forward. Mr. Landers, the mate, 
sat by the skylight on the poop, reading a maga- 
zine. Second Mate Gabriel and the cooper were 
busy at the cooper's bench in the waist. No one 
else was on deck and I resolved to attempt again 
to escape. The situation seemed made to order. 
In the warm weather of the tropics, I had 
often seen old man Landers, when there was 
nothing doing on deck, sit and read by the hour 

95 



96 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

without ever looking up. I hoped that this 
morning his magazine would prove of absorbing 
interest. Gabriel and the cooper were intent 
upon their work. As for the sailors, I told them 
I was going to try to swim ashore and if I were 
discovered and they had to lower for me, I asked 
them to hurry as little as possible so I might 
have every chance to get away. 

For my adventure I wore a blue flannel shirt, 
dungaree trousers, and my blue cap. I tied my 
shoes together with a rope yarn, which I slipped 
baldric-fashion over my shoulder. In the belt at 
my waist I carried a sailor's sheath knife. With 
this I had a foolish idea that I might defend my- 
self against sharks. Without attracting atten- 
tion, I slipped over the bow, climbed down by 
the bob-stays, and let myself into the sea. I let 
myself wash silently astern past the ship's side 
and struck out for shore, swimming on my side 
without splash or noise, and looking back to 
watch developments aboard. 

I am convinced to this day that if I had not 
been in the water, old Landers would have kept 
his nose in that magazine for an hour or so and 



GABRIEL'S LITTLE DRAMA 97 

drowsed and nodded over it as I had seen him 
do dozens of times before. Either my good 
angel, fearful of the sharks, or my evil genius, 
malignantly bent upon thwarting me, must have 
poked the old fellow in the ribs. At any rate, 
he rose from his chair and, stepped to the taff- 
rail with a pair of binoculars in his hand. He 
placed the glasses to his eyes and squinted to- 
ward the pier to see whether or not the captain 
had reached shore. I don't know whether he saw 
the captain or not, but he saw me. 

" Who's that overboard? " he shouted. 

I did not answer. Then he recognized me. 

" Hey, you," he cried, calling me by name, 
" come back here." 

I kept on swimming. 

" Lay aft here, a boat's crew," Mr. Landers 
sang out. 

Gabriel and the cooper ran to the quarter-deck 
and stared at me. The sailors came lounging aft 
along the rail. Mr. Landers and Gabriel threw 
the boat's falls from the davit posts. The sailors 
strung out across the deck to lower the boat. 

" Lower away," shouted Mr. Landers. 



98 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

One end of the boat went down rapidly. The 
other end jerked and lurched and seemed to re- 
main almost stationary. I wondered whether my 
shipmates were bungling purposely. Mr. Lan- 
ders and Gabriel sprang among them, brushed 
them aside and lowered the boat themselves. A 
crew climbed down the brig's side into the boat. 
Old Gabriel went as boatheader. In a jiffy the 
sweeps were shot into place, the boat was shoved 
off, and the chase was on. 

All this had taken time. As the ship was drift- 
ing one way and I was quartering off in an al- 
most opposite direction, I must have been nearly 
a half mile from the vessel when Gabriel started 
to run me down. 

I swam on my side with a long, strong stroke 
that fast swimmers used to fancy before the Aus- 
tralian crawl came into racing vogue. I was 
swimming as I never in my life swam before — 
swimming for liberty. All my hope and heart, 
as well as all my strength, lay in every stroke. 
The clear, warm salt water creamed about my 
head and sometimes over it. I was making time. 
Swimming on my side, I could see everything 



GABRIEL'S LITTLE DRAMA 99 

that was happening behind me. As the boat 
came after me I noticed there was but a slight 
ripple of white water about the prow. Plainly 
it was not making great speed. 

" Pull away, my boys. We ketch dat feller,' , 
sang out Gabriel. 

Wilson at the midship oar " caught a crab " 
and tumbled over backwards, his feet kicking in 
the air. Wilson was a good oarsman. He was 
my friend. A hundred yards more and Walker 
at the tub oar did the same. He also was my 
friend. 

The boys were doing their best to help me — 
to give me a chance. I knew it. Gabriel knew 
it, too. The crafty old negro recognized the 
crisis. I could not hear what he said or see all 
that he did, but the boys told me about it after- 
wards. It must have been a pretty bit of acting. 

Suddenly Gabriel half rose from his seat and 
peered anxiously ahead. 

"My God!" he cried, "dat poor feller, he 
drown. Pull, my boys. Oh, good God!" 

The sailors at the sweeps had their backs to 
me. It was a good long swim and the water 



100 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

was full of sharks. It was not difficult to make 
them believe that I was verging on tragedy. 

" Dere he go down ! " Gabriel's voice was 
broken and sobbing. " He t'row his hands up. 
He underneath de water. I cain't see him. Oh, 
dat poor feller! No, dere he come up again — 
oh, good Lord! Pull away, my bully boys, pull 
away. We save him yet." 

Surely the stage lost a star when Gabriel be- 
came a whaler. The old Thespian was good — 
he was great. His acting carried conviction. 
The sailors believed I was drowning. They 
leaned upon their oars with a will. The sweeps 
bent beneath the powerful strokes. The boat 
jumped through the water. I noted the in- 
creased speed by the white spray that began to 
stand at the bow. Gabriel helped along the 
speed by forward lurches of his body, pushing at 
the same time upon the stroke oar. All the while 
he kept shouting: 

" We save him yet, dat poor feller ! Pull 
away, my boys." 

The boat came up rapidly. In a little while 
it was almost upon me. I tried to dodge it by 



GABRIEL'S LITTLE DRAMA 101 

darting off at right angles. It was no use — Ga- 
briel slewed his tiller and the boat came swishing 
round upon me. I had played the game out to 
the last and I was beaten — that was all. I caught 
the gunwale near the bow and pulled myself into 
the boat. 

" You make dam good swim, my boy," said old 
Gabriel, smiling at me as he brought the boat 
around and headed back for the ship. 

I had made a good swim. I was fully a mile 
from the brig. I was not much over a half mile 
from shore. I looked across the sunlit, dancing 
blue water to the land. How easy it would have 
been to swim it! How easy it would have been 
after I had crawled out upon the sands to hide 
in the nearby mountains and live on wild fruit 
until the ship started for the north and all dan- 
ger of capture was past. 

No land could have seemed more beautiful. 
Groves of banana, orange, and cocoanut trees 
held out their fruit to me. Forests swept to the 
summits of the mountains. Flowers were in riot- 
ous bloom everywhere. I could almost count the 
ribs in the glossy fronds of the palms. I could 



102 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

hear the soft crash of the combers on the coral 
beaches of those enchanted shores. It all looked 
like paradise and I had missed it by half a mile. 

When I reached the brig, Mr. Landers per- 
mitted me to put on dry clothing and then put 
me in irons, as the sea phrase is. This consisted 
in fastening my hands together in front of me 
with a pair of steel handcuffs of the ordinary 
kind used by sheriffs and policemen everywhere. 
Then he made me sit on the main hatch until 
Captain Winchester came back from Honolulu, 
along toward sundown. 

" What's the matter with that man? " roared 
the captain as he swung over the rail and his eyes 
lighted on me. 

"He jumped overboard and tried to swim 
ashore," said Mr. Landers in his nasal Cape Cod 
drawl. 

" Why didn't you get my rifle and shoot him? " 
thundered the captain. 

"Well," returned Mr. Landers, "I don't 
shoot folks." 

After supper the captain stuck his head out 
of the cabin gangway. 



GABRIELS LITTLE DRAMA 103 

"Come down here, you," he said. I stepped 
into the cabin, now bright with lighted lamps. 
The captain glared at me savagely. 

" You want to give me a bad name with Cap- 
tain Shorey when he takes command, do you? " 
he shouted. " You want to make it appear I 
have been hard on my men, eh? You think 
you're a smart sea lawyer, but I'll teach you the 
bitterest lesson you ever learned. We are bound 
for the Arctic Ocean. There are no ships up 
there but whale ships, and we do as we please. I 
have been sailing to the Arctic for thirteen years 
as master and mate of whale ships and I know 
just how far I can go in dealing with a man 
without making myself liable to law. I am go- 
ing to make it as rough for you as I know how 
to make it. I will put you over the jumps right. 
I will punish you to the limit. This ship is going 
to be a floating hell for you for the rest of the 
voyage. And when we get back to San Fran- 
cisco you can prosecute me all you please." 

He drew a key from his pocket and unlocked 
one manacle. It dropped from one wrist and 
dangled from the other. 



104 A YEAR WITH A WHALER, 

" Boy," he said to the Kanaka cabin boy, who 
has been listening with open mouth and bulging 
eyes to this tirade, " get this man a cup of water 
and a biscuit." 

I had had nothing to eat since breakfast, and 
I sat down at the cabin table and ate my one 
hardtack and drank my quart tin of water with 
a relish. After my meal, the captain fastened 
my handcuff again and jerked a little hatch out 
of the floor. 

" Get down there," he said. 

I climbed down and he clapped the hatch on 
again. I was in darkness except for the light 
that filtered from the cabin lamps through the 
four cracks of the hatch. When my eyes had 
become accustomed to the dimness, I made out 
that I was in the ship's run, where the provisions 
for the captain's table were stored. I rummaged 
about as well as I could in my handcuffs and 
found a sack of raisins open and a box of soda 
crackers. To these I helped myself generously. 
From a forecastle viewpoint they were rare 
dainties, and I filled my empty stomach with 
them. I had not tasted anything so good since 
I had my last piece of pie ashore. Pie! Dear 



GABRIEL'S LITTLE DRAMA 105 

me! One doesn't know how good it is — just 
common pie baked in a bakery and sold at the 
corner grocery — until one cannot get it and has 
had nothing but salt horse and cracker hash for 
months. I used to yearn for pie by day and 
dream of pie by night. At bedtime the captain 
snatched the hatch off again and tossed me down 
my blankets. I bundled up in them as best I 
could and slept with my manacles on. 

I was kept in irons on bread and water for 
five days and nights. Sometimes in the day- 
time, with one handcuff unlocked and hanging 
from my other wrist, I was put at slushing down 
the main boom or washing paint-work. But for 
the most part I was held a close prisoner in the 
run, being called to the cabin table three times 
a day for my bread and water. Finally, when 
Captain Shorey came aboard and assumed com- 
mand and the vessel headed for the north, I was 
released and sent to the forecastle. My ship- 
mates proved Job's comforters and were filled 
with gloomy predictions regarding my future. 

" I pity you from now on," each one said. 

But their prophecies proved false. After Cap- 
Sain Shorey took charge of the ship Mr. Win- 



106 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

Chester became mate. As mate he was, as may 
be said, the ship's foreman, directing the work 
of the men, and was in much more intimate con- 
tact with the sailors than when he had been skip- 
per. In his new capacity he had much greater 
opportunity to make it unpleasant for me in a 
thousand ways. But for some reason or other 
he never made good that ferocious speech he had 
delivered to me in the cabin. 

When other green hands bungled, he damned 
them in round terms for their awkwardness. 
When I blundered he showed me how to correct 
my error. " Not that way, my boy," he would 
say. " Do it this way." When I took my trick 
at the wheel he would often spin a yarn or crack 
a joke with me. He loaned me books from time 
to time. In Behring Sea, when he got out his 
rifle and shot okchug seals as they lay basking 
on cakes of ice, he almost invariably took me 
with him in the boat to bring back the kill. In 
short, he treated me more considerately than he 
treated any other man in the forecastle and be- 
fore the voyage was over we had become fast 
friends. 



CHAPTER IX 

THROUGH THE SOARING FORTIES 

BEFORE leaving the islands, we shipped a 
Portuguese negro boat-steerer to take the 
place of the Night King. He was coal 
black, had a wild roll to his eyes, an explosive, 
spluttering way of talking, looked strikingly like 
a great ape, and had little more than simian intel- 
ligence. His feet had the reputation of being 
the largest feet in the Hawaiian Islands. When 
I had seen them I was prepared to believe they 
were the largest in the world. He was dubbed 
" Big Foot " Louis, and the nickname stuck to 
him during the voyage. He came aboard bare- 
footed. I don't know whether he could find any 
shoes in the islands big enough to fit him or not. 
Anyway, he didn't need shoes in the tropics. 

When we began to get north into cold weather 
he needed them badly, and there were none on 

board large enough for him to get his toes in. 

107 



108 A YEAR WITft A WHALER. 

The captain went through his stock of Eskimo 
boots, made of walrus hide and very elastic, but 
they were too small. When we entered the re- 
gion of snow, Louis was still running about the 
deck barefooted. As a last resort he sewed him- 
self a pair of canvas shoes — regular meal sacks 
— and wore them through snow and blizzard and 
during the cold season when we were in the grip 
of the Behring Sea ice pack. Up around Beh- 
ring straits the captain hired an Eskimo to make 
a pair of walrus hide boots big enough for Louis 
to wear, and Louis wore them until we got back 
to San Francisco and went ashore in them. I 
met him wandering along Pacific Street in his 
walrus hides. However, he soon found a pair of 
brogans which he could wear with more or less 
comfort. 

One night while I was knocking about the 
Barbary Coast with my shipmates we heard 
dance music and the sound of revelry coming 
from behind the swinging doors of the Bow Bells 
saloon, a free-and-easy resort. We stepped in- 
side. Waltzing around the room with the grace 
of a young bowhead out of water was " Big- 



THE ROARING FORTIES 109 

Foot" Louis, his arm around the waist of a 
buxom negress, and on his feet nothing but a 
pair of red socks. We wondered what had be- 
come of his shoes and spied them on the piano, 
which the " professor " was vigorously strum- 
ming. Louis seemed to be having more fun than 
anybody, and was perfectly oblivious to the tit- 
ters of the crowd and to the fact that it was not 
de rigueur on the Barbary Coast to dance in 
one's socks. 

We left the Hawaiian Islands late in March 
and, standing straight north, soon left the tropics 
behind, never to see them again on the voyage. 
As we plunged into the " roaring forties " we 
struck our first violent storm. The fury of the 
gale compelled us to heave to under staysails and 
drift, lying in the troughs of the seas and riding 
the waves sidewise. The storm was to me a reve- 
lation of what an ocean gale could be. Old sail- 
ors declared they never had seen anything worse. 
The wind shrieked and whistled in the rigging 
like a banshee. It was impossible to hear ordi- 
nary talk and the men had to yell into each 
other's ears. We put out oil bags along the 



110 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

weather side to keep the waves from breaking. 
But despite the oil that spread from them over 
the water, giant seas frequently broke over the 
brig. One crushed the waist boat into kindling 
wood and sent its fragments flying all over the 
deck. We were fortunate to have several other 
extra boats in the hold against just such an emer- 
gency. Waves sometimes filled the ship to the 
top of the bulwarks and the sailors waded about 
up to their breasts in brine until the roll of the 
vessel spilled the water overboard or it ran back 
into the sea through the scuppers and hawse- 
holes. 

The waves ran as high as the topsail yard. 
They would pile up to windward of us, gaining 
height and volume until we had to look up al- 
most vertically to see the tops. Just as a giant 
comber seemed ready to break in roaring foam 
and curl over and engulf us, the staunch little 
brig would slip up the slope of water and ride 
over the summit in safety. Then the sea would 
shoot out on the other side of the vessel with a 
deafening hiss like that of a thousand serpents 
and rush skyward again, the wall of water 



THE ROARING FORTIES 111 

streaked and shot with foam and looking like a 
polished mass of jade or agate. 

I had not imagined water could assume such 
wild and appalling shapes. Those monster 
waves seemed replete with malignant life, roar- 
ing out their hatred of us and watching alertly 
with their devilish foam-eyes for a chance to leap 
upon us and crush us or sweep us to death on 
their crests. 

I became genuinely seasick now for the first 
time. A little touch of seasickness I had experi- 
enced in the tropics was as nothing. To the rail 
I went time and again to give up everything 
within me, except my immortal soul, to the mad 
gods of sea. For two days I lay in my bunk. I 
tried pickles, fat bacon, everything that any 
sailor recommended, all to no purpose. I would 
have given all I possessed for one fleeting mo- 
ment upon something level and still, something 
that did not plunge and lurch and roll from side 
to side and rise and fall. I think the most 
wretched part of seasickness is the knowledge 
that you cannot run away from it, that you are 
penned in with it, that go where you will, on the 



112 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

royal yard or in the bilge, you cannot escape the 
ghastly nightmare even for a minute. 

There is no use righting it and no use dosing 
yourself with medicines or pickles or lemons or 
fat meat. Nothing can cure it. In spite of 
everything it will stay with you until it has 
worked its will to the uttermost, and then it will 
go away at last of its own accord, leaving you a 
wan, limp wreck. I may add, to correct a gen- 
eral impression, that it is impossible to become 
seasoned to seasickness. One attack does not 
render the victim immune from future recur- 
rences. I was very sick once again on the voy- 
age. After a season ashore, the best sailors are 
liable to seasickness, especially if they encounter 
rough weather soon after leaving port. Some 
time later we were frozen solidly in Behring Sea 
for three weeks. When a storm swell from the 
south broke up the ice and the motionless brig 
began suddenly to rock and toss on a heavy sea, 
every mother's son aboard, including men who 
had been to sea all their lives, was sick. Not 
one escaped. 

During the storm we kept a man at the wheel 



THE ROARING FORTIES 113 

and another on the try-works as a lookout. One 
day during my trick at the wheel, I was prob- 
ably responsible for a serious accident, though it 
might have happened with the most experienced 
sailor at the helm. To keep the brig in the trough 
of the seas, I was holding her on a certain point 
of the compass, but the big waves buffeted the 
vessel about with such violence that my task was 
difficult. Captain Shorey was standing within 
arm's length of me, watching the compass. A 
sea shoved the brig's head to starboard and, as if 
it had been lying in ambush for just such an 
opportunity, a giant comber came curling in 
high over the stern. It smashed me into the 
wheel and for an instant I was buried under 
twenty feet of crystal water that made a green 
twilight all about us. 

Then the wave crashed down ponderously 
upon the deck and I was standing in clear air 
again. To my astonishment, the captain was 
no longer beside me. I thought he had been 
washed overboard. The wave had lifted him 
upon its top, swept him high over the skylight 
the entire length of the quarter-deck and dropped 



114 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

him on the main deck in the waist. His right 
leg was broken below the knee. Sailors and 
boat-steerers rushed to him and carried him into 
the cabin, where Mr. Winchester set the broken 
bones. We put into Unalaska a week later and 
the surgeon of the revenue cutter Bear reset the 
leg. This was in the last days of March. The 
captain was on crutches in July, when we caught 
our first whale. 

The storm did not blow itself out. It blew us 
out of it. We must have drifted sidewise with 
the seas about six hundred miles. At dawn of 
the second day, after leaving the fury of the 
forties behind, we were bowling along in smooth 
water with all sails set. The sky was clear 
and the sea like hammered silver. Far ahead a 
mountain rose into the sky — a wedge-shaped 
peak, silver-white with snow, its foot swathed in 
purple haze. It rose above Unimak Pass, which 
connects the Pacific Ocean and Behring Sea be- 
tween Unimak and Ugamok islands of the Fox 
Island chain. 

Unimak Pass is ten miles broad, and its tow- 
ering shores are sheer, black, naked rock. Mr. 



THE ROARING FORTIES 115 

Winchester, who had assumed command after 
the captain had broken his leg, set a course to 
take us directly through the passage. Running 
before a light breeze that bellied all our sails, we 
began to draw near the sea gorge at the base of 
the mountain. Then, without warning, from 
over the horizon came a savage white squall, 
blotting out mountain, pass, sea, and sky. 

I never saw bad weather blow up so quickly. 
One moment the ship was gliding over a smooth 
sea in bright sunlight. The next, a cloud as 
white and almost as thick as wool had closed 
down upon it; snow was falling heavily in big, 
moist flakes, a stiff wind was heeling the vessel 
on its side, and we could not see ten feet beyond 
the tip of the jib boom. 

The wind quickened into a gale. By fast 
work we managed to furl sails and double-reef 
the topsail before they carried away. Soon the 
deck was white with four or five inches of snow. 
On the forecastle-head Big Foot Louis was 
posted as lookout. Everybody was anxious. 
Mr. Winchester took his stand close by the main 
shrouds at the break of the poop and kept gaz- 



116 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

ing ahead through his glasses into the mist. The 
sailors and boat-steerers crowded the forward 
rails, peering vainly into the swirling fog. Big 
Foot Louis bent forward with his hand shielding 
his eyes from the falling snow. 

" Land, land! " he cried. 

If it were land that Louis saw through the 
clouds and blinding snow, it was mighty close. 
Our doom seemed sealed. We expected the ship 
to crash bows-on upon the rocks. We nerved 
ourselves for the shock. A momentary vision of 
shipwreck on those bleak coasts in snow and 
storm obsessed me. But Louis's eyes had de- 
ceived him. The ship went riding on its stately 
way through the blinding snow before the gale. 

The situation was ticklish, if not critical. We 
had been headed squarely for the passage before 
the storm closed down. Now we could not see 
where we were going. If we held directly upon 
our course we were safe. If the gale blew us 
even slightly out of our way, shipwreck and 
death on the rock-bound shore awaited us. 
Which would it be? 

Mr. Winchester was a man of iron nerve. He 



THE ROARING FORTIES 117 

demonstrated this now as he did many times 
afterward. He was as skillful a navigator as 
he was a fearless one. He knew his reckonings 
were good. He knew that when the squall shut 
out the world the brig's nose was pointed directly 
at the center of Unimak Pass. So he did not 
veer to east or west, or seek to tack back from 
the dangerous coasts on our bows, but drove the 
vessel straight upon its course into the blank 
white wall of mist and snow. 

An hour later the squall lifted as quickly as 
it had come. Blue skies and sunshine came back. 
We found ourselves almost becalmed on a placid 
sea. To the south lay the outline of a lofty 
coast. 

A boat-steerer bustled forward. " We are in 
Behring Sea," he said with a laugh. 

We had shot through the narrow channel 
without sighting the shores. I have often won- 
dered just how close to port or starboard death 
was to us that morning on the black cliffs of 
Unimak Pass. 



CHAPTER X 



IN THE ICE 



FROM Unalaska, into which port we put 
to have the captain's leg attended to, the 
brig stood northwesterly for the spring 
whaling on the bowhead and right whale 
grounds off the Siberian coast. We were a 
week's sail from the Fox Islands when we en- 
countered our first ice. It appeared in small 
chunks floating down from the north. The 
blocks became more numerous until they dap- 
pled the sea. They grew in size. Strings and 
floes appeared. Then we brought up against a 
great ice field stretching to the north as far as 
the eye could see. It was all floe ice broken 
into hummocks and pressure ridges and pinna- 
cles, with level spaces between. There were no 
towering 'bergs such as are launched into the sea 
from the glaciers on the Greenland coast and 

118 



IN, THE ICE 119 

the Pacific coast of Alaska. The highest 'berg 
I saw on the voyage was not more than forty 
feet high. It was composed of floe ice which had 
been forced upward by the pressure of the pack. 

The crow's nest was now rigged and placed in 
position on the cross-trees abaft the foremast, 
between the topsail and the fore-top-gallant-sail 
yard. It was a square box of heavy white can- 
vas nailed upon a wooden framework. When a 
man stood in it the canvas sides reached to his 
breast and were a protection against the bitter 
winds. From early morning until dark an of- 
ficer and a boat-steerer occupied the crow's nest 
and kept a constant lookout for whales. 

As soon as we struck the ice the captain's slop- 
chest was broken open and skin clothes were 
dealt out to the men. Accoutred for cold 
weather, I wore woolen underwear and yarn 
socks next my flesh; an outer shirt of squirrel 
skin with hood or parka; pants and vest of hair 
seal of the color and sheen of newly minted sil- 
ver ; a coat of dogskin that reached almost to my 
knees; a dogskin cap; deerskin socks with the 
hair inside over my yarn socks ; walrus-hide boots 



120 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

and walrus-hide mittens over yarn mittens. The 
walrus-boots were fastened by a gathering string 
just below the knees and by thongs of tanned skin 
about the ankle. Some of the men wore heavy 
reindeer-skin coats. The skin clothes worn by the 
officers and boat-steerers were of finer quality 
and more pretentious. Perhaps the handsomest 
costume was that of Little Johnny. It consisted 
of coat, vest, and trousers of silvery hair-seal, 
with the edges of the coat trimmed with the 
snowwhite fur of fur-seal pups. With this he 
wore a black dogskin cap and walrus-hide boots. 

While we were among the ice, the officer in the 
crow's nest directed the course of the brig. 
Whaling officers are great fellows to show their 
skill by just grazing dangerous ice. Many a 
time we green hands stood with our hearts in our 
mouths as the ship seemed about to crash into a 
'berg bows-on. 

" Starboard, sir," the helmsman would re- 
spond. 

" Starboard," would come the order from 
aloft. 

The bow would swing slowly to one side and 




On 

o 



fe 



IN THE ICE 121 

the 'berg would go glancing along the rail so 
close perhaps that we could have grabbed a 
snowball off some projection. 

" Steady," the officer would call. 

" Steady, sir." The bow would stop in its 
lateral swing. 

" Port." 

" Port, sir." The bow would swing the other 
way. 

" Steady." We would be upon our old course 
again. 

Once I remember the mate was in the crow's 
nest and had been narrowly missing ice all day 
for the fun of the thing — " showing off," as we 
rather disturbed green hands said. A 'berg 
about thirty feet high, a giant for Behring Sea 
waters, showed a little ahead and to leeward of 
our course. The mate thought he could pass to 
windward. He kept the brig close to the wind 
until the 'berg was very near. Then he saw a 
windward passage was impossible and tried sud- 
denly to go to leeward. 

" Hard up your wheel," he cried. 

" Hard up it is, sir." 



122 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

The bow swung toward the 'berg — swung 
slowly, slowly across it. The tip of the jib-boom 
almost rammed a white pinnacle. Just when 
everybody was expecting the brig to pile up in 
wreck on the ice, the great 'berg swept past our 
starboard rail. But we had not missed it. Its 
jagged edges scraped a line an inch deep along 
our side from bow to stern. 

Shooting ohcliug (or, as it is sometimes spelled, 
ooksook) or hair seals was a favorite amusement 
in the spring ice. The mate was an expert with 
a rifle. He shot many as they lay sunning them- 
selves on ice cakes. Okchugs are as large as oxen 
and are covered with short silvery hair so glossy 
that it fairly sparkles. If an okchug was killed 
outright, its head dropped over upon the ice and 
it lay still. If only slightly wounded, the animal 
flounced off into the sea. If vitally hurt, it re- 
mained motionless with its head up and glaring 
defiance, whereupon a boat's crew would row out 
to the ice cake and a sailor would finish the crea- 
ture with a club. 

It was exciting to step on a small ice cake to 
face a wounded and savage okchug. The ani- 



IN THE ICE 123 

mal would come bouncing on its flippers straight 
at one with a vicious barking roar. The nose 
was the okchug's most vulnerable point. A tap 
on the nose with a club would stretch the great 
creature out dead. It required a cool head, a 
steady nerve, and a good aim to deliver this fin- 
ishing stroke upon the small black snout. If one 
missed or slipped on the ice, the possible conse- 
quences would not have been pleasant. We 
tanned the skins of the okchugs and made them 
into trousers or " pokes." The meat was hung 
over the bows to keep in an ice-box of all out- 
doors. Ground up and made into sausages, it 
was a piece de resistance on the forecastle bill of 
fare. 

One night in the latter part of May we saw 
far off a great light flaring smokily across the 
sea. It was what is known in whaler parlance as 
a bug-light and was made by blazing blubber 
swinging in an iron basket between the two 
smokestacks of a whale-ship's try- works. By it 
the crew of that distant ship was working at 
trying out a whale. The bug-light signaled to 
all the whaling fleet the first whale of the season. 



124 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

The great continent of ice drifting southward 
gradually closed round the fleet. The ships had 
worked so far in there was no escape. In the 
early part of June the brig was frozen in. For 
three weeks the vessel remained motionless in 
solid ice with every stitch of canvas furled. No 
water or land was in sight — nothing but one 
great sweep of broken and tumbled ice as far as 
the eye could see. Those three ice-bound June 
weeks were given over to idleness. A stove was 
placed in the forecastle and was kept going night 
and day. This made it possible to keep comfort- 
able and to read. 

We went on frequent seal hunts. We strolled 
across the frozen sea to visit the other ships, the 
nearest of which was two miles away. Visiting 
is called " gamming " by whalers. We learned 
the gossip of the fleet, who had taken the first 
whale, how many whales had been caught, the 
adventures of the ships, the comedies and trag- 
edies of the whaling season. 

We established, too, what we called the " Beh- 
ring Sea Circulating Library." There were a 
number of books in every forecastle. These 



IN THE ICE 125 

greasy, dog-eared volumes were passed about 
from ship to ship. Perhaps there were twenty 
books aboard the brig which had been read by 
almost every member of the crew, forward and 
aft. Before we got out of the ice, we had ex- 
changed these volumes for an entirely new lot 
from other ships. 

One morning I awoke with the ship rocking 
like a cradle. I pulled on my clothes and hur- 
ried on deck. The ice fields were in wild commo- 
tion. Great swells from some storm upon the 
open sea to the south were rolling under them. 
Crowded and tumultuous waves of ice twenty 
feet high chased each other across the frozen 
fields from horizon to horizon. The ship would 
sink for a moment between ridges of ice and 
snow, and then swing up on the crest of an ice 
mountain. Great areas of ice would fall away 
as if the sea had opened beneath them. Then 
they would shoot up and shut out half the sky. 
The broken and jagged edges of these white and 
solid billows appeared for an instant like a range 
of snowy sierras which, in another instant, would 
crumble from view as if some seismic cataclysm 



126 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

had shaken them down in ruin. The air was 
filled with grinding, crushing, ominous noises 
and explosions. 

The ship was in imminent peril. In that mad 
turmoil of ice it seemed certain she would be 
ground to pieces. Captain Shorey, who was 
hobbling about on crutches, ordered a cask of 
bread, a cask of water, and a barrel of beef 
hoisted on deck ready to be thrown out on an 
ice cake in case the brig were wrecked and we 
were cast away. 

In the grinding of the floes, the ship became 
wedged in between two immense pieces of ice. 
The great bergs washed closer and closer. 
When they rose on some tremendous billow, 
great caverns, washed out by the sea, appeared 
in their sides like mouths, edged with splinters 
and points of blue and glittering ice, like fangs. 
As they rose and fell, it seemed the two white 
monsters were opening and closing devouring 
maws for us while the suck of the water in their 
ice caves made noises like the roar of hungry 
beasts of prey. 

A cable was run out hurriedly over the bow 



IN THE ICE 127 

and a bowline at the end of it was slipped over 
a hummock of ice. With the inboard end 
wound around the windlass, all hands worked 
like beavers to heave the brig out of her dan- 
gerous position. It was all the crew could do 
to swing the windlass bars up and down. The 
ship went forward slowly, almost imperceptibly, 
and all the time the great bergs swept closer 
and closer. For a long time it looked as if we 
were doomed. There was no doubt about the 
ship's fate if the bergs struck it. But inch by 
inch, heave by heave, we hauled her through. 
Ten minutes later, the ice monsters came to- 
gether with a force that would have crushed an 
ironclad. 

Gradually patches of clear water began to 
appear in the ice. It was as though the white 
fields were opening great blue ej^es. Little 
lakes and zigzag lanes of water formed. Sails 
were set. The brig began to work her way 
along. Soon she was swinging on heavy bil- 
lows — not white billows of ice but green billows 
of water, thick with ice in stars and constella- 
tions. 



CHAPTER XI 

CROSS COUNTRY WHALING 

WE had hardly washed clear of the ice in 
the heavy seas when " Blow ! " rang 
from the crow's nest. A school of 
whales close ahead, covering the sea with foun- 
tains, was coming leisurely toward the ship. 
There were more than thirty of them. 

" Bowheads ! " shouted the mate. 

Their great black heads rose above the sur- 
face like ponderous pieces of machinery; tall 
fountains shot into the air; the wind caught the 
tops of the fountains and whisked them off in 
smoke; hollow, sepulchral whispers of sound 
came to the brig as the breath left the giant 
lungs in mighty exhalations. Why they were 
called bowheads was instantly apparent — the 
outline of the top of the head curved like an 

Indian's bow. As the head sank beneath the 

128 



CROSS COUNTRY WHALING 129 

surface, the glistening back, half as broad as a 
city street and as black as asphalt, came spin- 
ning up out of the sea and went spinning down 
again. 

Our crippled captain in his fur clothes and 
on crutches limped excitedly about the quarter- 
deck glaring at $300,000 worth of whales spout- 
ing under his nose. But with so much ice about 
and such a heavy sea running he was afraid to 
lower. 

If the whales saw the brig they gave no sign. 
They passed all around the vessel, the spray of 
their fountains blowing on deck. One headed 
straight for the ship. The mate seized a shoulder 
bomb-gun and ran to the bow. The whale rose, 
blew a fountain up against the jib-boom, and 
dived directly beneath the brig's forefoot. As 

its back curled down, the mate, with one knee 
resting on the starboard knighthead, took aim 
and fired. He surely hit the whale — there was 
little chance to miss. But the bomb evidently 
did not strike a vital spot, for the leviathan 
passed under the ship, came up on the other 
side and went on about its business. 



130 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

The sight of all these whales passing by us 
with such unconcern, blowing water on us as if 
in huge contempt, almost seeming to laugh at 
us and mock our bombs and harpoons and hu- 
man skill, drove the captain frantic. Should he 
allow that fortune in whales to escape him with- 
out a try for it? With purple face and popping 
eyes he gazed at the herd now passing astern. 

"Lower them boats!" he cried. 

"What?" expostulated Mr. Landers. "Do 
you want to get us all killed ? " 

"Lower them boats!" yelled the skipper. 

" Don't you know that a boat that gets fast to 
a whale in that ice will be smashed, sure?" 

" Lower them boats ! " shouted the captain. 

Mr. Winchester, enthusiastic and fearless 
whaleman that he was, was eager for the cap- 
tain's order. His boat and Mr. Landers's went 
down. The waist boat — mine — was left on its 
davits. But Gabriel, its boatheader, armed with 
a shoulder gun, went in the mate's boat. Left 
aboard to help work ship, I had an opportunity 
to view that exciting chase from beginning to 
end. 



CROSS COUNTRY WHALING 131 

With storm-reefed sails, the boats went plung- 
ing away over the big seas, dodging sharply 
about to avoid the ice cakes. Not more than 
two hundred yards away on our starboard beam 
a great whale was blowing. The mate marked 
it and went for it like a bull dog. He steered to 
intercept its course. It was a pretty piece of 
maneuvering. The whale rose almost in front 
of him and his boat went shooting upon its back. 
Long John let fly his harpoon. Gabriel fired a 
bomb from his shoulder gun. There was a flurry 
of water as the whale plunged under. Back and 
forth it slapped with its mighty flukes as it dis- 
appeared, narrowly missing the boat. Down 
came the boat's sail. It was bundled up in a 
jiffy and the mast slewed aft until it stuck out 
far behind. Out went the sweeps. The mate 
stood in the stern wielding a long steering oar. 
I could see the whale line whipping and sizzling 
out over the bows. 

For only a moment the whale remained be- 
neath the surface. Then it breached. Its black 
head came shooting up from the water like a 
titanic rocket. Up went the great body into the 



132 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

air until at least forty feet of it was lifted 
against the sky like some weird, mighty column, 
its black sides glistening and its belly showing 
white. Then the giant bulk crashed down again 
with a smack on the sea that might have been 
heard for miles and an impact that sent tons of 
water splashing high in air. For an instant the 
monster labored on the water as if mortally hurt, 
spouting up fountains of clotted blood that 
splattered over the ice blocks and turned them 
from snow white to crimson. Then a second 
time the whale sounded and went speeding away 
to windward, heading for the ice pack. 

It dragged the boat at a dizzy clip despite the 
fact that the line was running out so fast as to 
seem to the men in the boat a mere vibrant, in- 
distinct smear of yellow. The boat was taken 
slicing through the big waves, driving its nose 
at times beneath the water, and knocking against 
lumps of ice. A long ice block appeared in its 
course. A collision seemed inevitable unless the 
boat was cut loose from the whale. 

Captain Shorey was watching the chase with 
fierce intentness as he leaned upon his crutches 



CROSS COUNTRY WHALING 133 

on the forecastle head. He had been filled with 
great joy, seized with anxiety or shaken with 
anger as the hunt passed from one phase to an- 
other. He shouted his emotions aloud though 
there was never a chance for the men in the boats 
to hear him. 

" Good boy, Long John," he had cried when 
the boatsteerer drove his harpoon home. 

" That's our fish," he had chortled as the 
wounded leviathan leaped high against the sky 
and spouted blood over the ice. 

Now when it seemed possible that the mate 
Would be forced to cut loose from the whale to 
save his boat from destruction, the captain 
danced about on his crutches in wild excitement. 

" Don't cut that line! Don't cut that line! " 
he yelled. 

Mr. Winchester realized as well as the cap- 
tain that there was something like $10,000 on 
the other end of the rope, and he had no idea of 
cutting loose. Towed by the whale the boat 
drove toward the ice. The mate worked hard 
with his steering oar to avoid striking the block. 
It was impossible. The bow smashed into one 



134 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

end of the ice cake, was lifted out of the water 
and dragged across to slip back into the sea. A 
hole was stove in the starboard bow through 
which the water rushed. The crew thereafter 
was kept busy bailing. 

It was evident from the fountains of blood 
that the whale was desperately wounded, but its 
vitality was marvelous and it seemed it might 
escape. When Mr. Landers saw the mate's line 
being played out so rapidly he should have hur- 
ried to the mate's boat and bent the line from his 
own tub to the end of the mate's line. As an 
old whaleman Mr. Landers knew what to do in 
this crisis, but in such ice and in such high seas 
he preferred not to take a chance. He was a 
cautious soul, so he held his boat aloof. The 
mate waved to him frantically. Long John and 
Gabriel wigwagged frenzied messages with wav- 
ing arms. 

As for Captain Shorey on his crutches on the 
forecastle head, when it seemed certain that the 
whale would run away with all the mate's line 
and escape, he apparently suffered temporary 
aberration. He damned old man Landers in 



CROSS COUNTRY WHALING 135 

every picturesque and fervent term of an old 
whaleman's vocabulary. He shook his fist at 
him. He waved a crutch wildly. 

" Catch that whale ! " he yelled in a voice 
husky and broken with emotion. " For God's 
sake, catch that whale!" 

All this dynamic pantomime perhaps had its 
effect on Landers. At any rate, his men began 
to bend to their sweeps and soon his boat was 
alongside that of the mate. His line was tied to 
the free end of the rope in the mate's almost ex- 
hausted tub just in time. The mate's line ran 
out and Landers' boat now became fast to the 
whale. 

Fortune favored Landers. His boat was 
dragged over the crests of the seas at thrilling 
speed, but he managed to keep clear of ice. The 
whale showed no sign of slowing down. In a 
little while it had carried away all the line in 
Mr. Landers' tub. The monster was free of the 
boats at last. It had ceased to come to the sur- 
face to blow. It had gone down into the deep 
waters carrying with it the mate's harpoon and 
800 fathoms of manila rope. It seemed prob- 



136 A YEAR WITH. A WHALER^ 

able it had reached the safety of the ice pack and 
was lost. 

The boats came back to the brig; slowly, 
wounded, limping over the waves. The flying 
spray had frozen white over the fur clothes of 
the men, making them look like snow images. 
They climbed aboard in silence. Mr. Landers 
had a hang-dog, guilty look. The skipper was 
a picture of gloom and smoldering fury. He 
bent a black regard upon Mr. Landers as the 
latter swung over the rail, but surprised us all 
by saying not a word. 

When the next day dawned, we were out of 
sight of ice, cruising in a quiet sea. A lookout 
posted on the forecastle head saw far ahead a 
cloud of gulls flapping about a dark object 
floating on the surface. It was the dead whale. 



CHAPTER XII 

CUTTING IN AND TRYING OUT, 

TWO boats were sent to secure the whale. 
I lowered with one. As we came up to 
the whale, I marveled at its immense bulk. 
It looked even larger than when it had breached 
and I had seen it shoot up, a giant column of 
flesh and blood, against the heavens. It had 
turned belly up as dead whales do, its ridged 
white abdomen projecting above the waves. It 
seemed much like a mighty white and black rock, 
against which the waves lapped lazily. Seventy- 
five feet long the officers estimated it — an un- 
usually large bull whale. I had never imagined 
any animal so large. I had seen Jumbo, said to 
be the largest elephant ever in captivity. Jumbo 
made ordinary circus elephants seem like pig- 
mies. This whale was as big as a dozen Jumbos. 

The great hairy mammoth, of which I had seen 

137 



138 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

stuffed specimens in museums, would have 
seemed a mere baby beside this monster of the 
deep. 

As proof that the whale was ours, the har- 
poon sticking in its back bore the brig's name, 
and fast to the haft and floating far out on the 
sea in a tangled mass was the 800 fathoms of 
line from the brig's two tubs. Our first work 
was to recover the line. As this had to be 
straightened out and coiled in the boats, it was 
a long and tedious job. Then with a short sharp 
spade, a hole was cut through the whale's flukes 
and a cable passed through and made fast. 
[With both boats strung out along the cable, the 
men bent to the sweeps, hauling the carcass 
slowly toward the brig. Meanwhile the vessel 
had been sailing toward us. So we had but a 
hundred yards or so to pull. 

The loose end of the hawser was passed 
through the hawse hole in the starboard bow and 
made fast to the forebitt. In this way the flukes 
were held close to the bow. As the brig made 
headway under short sail, the great body washed 
back against the vessel's side and lay upon the 



CUTTING IN AND TRYING OUT 139 

surface, the head abreast the wheel on the quar- 
ter-deck — which will give an idea of the whale's 
length. 

The gang-plank was taken from the bulwarks 
and a cutting stage lowered over the whale. 
This stage was made of three broad planks. 
Two projected from the ship's side, the third 
joined their outer ends. Along the inside of 
the third plank was a low railing. Two officers 
took their station on the outer plank with long- 
handled spades to cut in the blubber. The spade 
was enough like a garden spade in shape to sug- 
gest its name and was fastened to a long pole. 
Its cutting edge was as sharp as a razor. 

A block and tackle was rigged above the 
whale, the upper block fastened to the cross- 
trees of the main mast and the tackle carried 
forward to the windlass. A great hook was fas- 
tened into the whale's blubber, and everything 
was ready for the cutting in. 

As the officers with their spades cut under the 
blubber, the sailors heaved on the windlass. The 
blanket piece of blubber began to rise. As it 
rose, the officers kept spading under it, rolling 



140 A YEAR WITH A WHALER, 

the whale over gradually. Thus the whale was 
peeled much as one would peel a roll of bologna 
sausage. When the great carcass had been 
rolled completely over, the blanket piece of 
blubber came off. The upper end of it fast to 
the tackle hook was up almost against the cross- 
trees as the lower end swung free. The largest 
blanket pieces weighed perhaps ten tons. Six 
were taken off in the process of skinning. The 
weight of the whale, I should estimate, was 
roughly something like one hundred tons, per- 
haps a little more. 

When the blanket piece was cut free from the 
whale it swung inboard, and as it came over the 
main hatch, it was lowered into the hold. There 
men fell upon it with short spades, cutting it 
into small pieces and distributing them equally 
about the ship to prevent the vessel from listing. 
It took most of the day to strip the whale of its 
blubber. When this had been finished the great 
flensed carcass stretched out along the ship's 
side a mass of blood-red flesh. The final work 
was cutting in the " old head." 

Long John with an axe climbed down upon 



CUTTING IN AND TTZYING OUT, 141 

the whale's back. As it was his boat that had 
struck the whale the cutting in of the head was 
his job. Nobody envied him the task. The 
stripped body of a whale offers a surface as slip- 
pery as ice. As the waves rocked the whale, 
Long John had much ado to keep his footing. 
Once he fell and almost tumbled into the water. 
Finally he cut himself two foot-holds and began 
to wield his axe, raining blows upon the neck. 
He chopped through from the upper neck sur- 
face into the corners of the mouth, thus loosen- 
ing the head and upper jaw from the body. The 
lower jaw is devoid of teeth. The tackle hook 
having been fixed in the tip-top of the head's 
bowlike curve, the windlass men heaved away. 
Up rose the head above the bulwarks and swung 
inwards. 

"Lower, lower away!" cried the mate. 

Down came the head upon the deck and a 
great cheer went up. The " old head " was safe. 
Immediately afterwards, the mate came forward 
with a bottle of Jamaica rum and gave each 
man a swig. " Bringing in his old head," as it 
is called, is a memorable event in cutting in a 



142 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

whale, and is always celebrated by dealing out 
a drink all around. 

Great hunks of meat were cut out from the 
carcass. These were hung over the bow. The 
meat was served in the form of steaks and sau- 
sages in both forecastle and cabin. And let me 
give my testimony right here that whale steak 
is mighty good eating. It tastes something like 
tender beef, though it is coarser grained and of 
ranker flavor. We preferred to eat it as steaks, 
though made into meat balls with gravy it was 
extremely toothsome. I do not know how whale 
would taste if served on the home table, but at 
sea, after months of salt horse and " sow belly," 
it was delicious. The hunks became coated with 
ice over the bow and kept well. They lasted us 
for several weeks. 

When the carcass was cut adrift it went float- 
ing astern. Flocks of gulls and sea birds that 
had been constantly hovering about the ship in 
hundreds waiting for the feast swooped down 
upon it. The body washed slowly out of sight, 
still swarmed over by the gulls. 

The head rested in the waist near the poop. 



CUTTING IN AND TRYING OUT 143 

It was, I should say, twelve feet high at the crest 
of the bow, and suggested some strange sort of 
tent. I stepped inside it without bending my 
head and walked about in it. Its sides were 
shaggy with the long hair hanging from the 
teeth or baleen, and the interior resembled, in a 
way, a hunter's forest lodge made of pine 
boughs. If the head had been in a forest instead 
of on the deck of a ship it would have formed an 
ideal shelter for a winter's night with a wood fire 
burning at the opening. 

Only the lower tip of the head or what we 
might call the nose rested on the deck. It was 
supported otherwise upon the teeth. I now had 
my first opportunity to see baleen in its natural 
setting. The teeth viewed from the outside 
looked, something like the interior of a piano. 
The whale's gums, following the bony skeleton 
of the jaw, formed an arched and undulant line 
from nose tip to the back of the jaw. The front 
teeth were six inches long; the back ones were 
ten feet. Each tooth, big and little alike, was 
formed of a thin slab of bluish whalebone, al- 
most flat. The largest of these slabs were six 



1U A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

inches broad at their base in the gum. The 
smallest were an inch. All tapered to a point. 
They were set in the gum with the flat surfaces 
together and almost touching. They were ex- 
tremely pliant and at the outer ends could be 
pulled wide apart. The inner edges were hung 
with black coarse hair, which seemed exactly 
like that of a horse's tail. The hair on the small 
front teeth was an inch long perhaps ; on the 
back teeth, it was from six to ten inches long. 

Such teeth are beautifully adapted to the 
animal's feeding habits. The baleen whale 
feeds on a kind of jelly fish. We saw at times 
the sea covered with these flat, round, whitish 
living discs. The whale swims through an area 
of this food with its mouth open. When it has 
obtained a mouthful, it closes its jaws. The 
water is forced out between the slab-like teeth; 
the jelly fish remain tangled in the hair to be 
gulped down. 

Our first job after the cutting in of the whale 
was to cut the baleen from the jaw. It was 
cut away in bunches of ten or a dozen slabs held 
together by the gums and stowed away in the 




o 

be 



CUTTING IN AND TRYING OUT 145 

hold not to be touched again until later in the 
voyage. 

While the baleen was being prepared for stow- 
age, the lid was removed from the try-works, 
uncovering the two big copper caldrons. A 
fire was started in the furnace with kindling and 
a handful of coal, but kept going thereafter with 
tried-out blubber called " scrap." Two men 
dressed in oil-skins were sent down into the blub- 
ber-room as the portion of the hold was called in 
which the blanket pieces of blubber had been 
stowed. Their oil-skins were to protect them 
from the oil which oozed from the blubber. Oil- 
skins, however, are but slight protection as I 
learned later when I was sent into the blubber 
room at the taking of another whale. The oil 
soaks through the water-proof oil-skins and sat- 
urates one's clothes and goes clear through to 
the skin leaving it as greasy as if it had been 
rubbed with oil. 

A whale's blubber lies immediately beneath 
its skin, which is black and rubbery and about a 
quarter of an inch thick. The blubber is packed 
between this thin covering and the flesh in a layer 



146 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

of pink and opalescent fat from six inches to 
two feet thick. The blubber is so full of oil that 
the oil exudes from it. One can squeeze the oil 
from a piece of raw blubber as water from a 
sponge. 

The two blubber-room men with short handled 
spades cut the great blankets of blubber in what 
in whaling parlance are called " horse pieces.'* 
These horse pieces are two or three feet long 
and about six inches wide. They are pitched 
into tubs on deck and the tubs dragged forward 
to the mincing vat. This is an immense oblong 
tub across the top of which is fastened a plank. 
Two sailors with mincing knives are stationed 
at each end of the plank. The mincing knife 
is like a carpenter's drawing knife, except that 
the edge is on the outside. The sailor lays a 
horse piece along the plank. Then grasping 
the mincing knife by its two handles, he passes 
the blade back and forth from side to side across 
the blubber until it has been cut into leaves 
something like those of a book, each leaf per- 
haps a quarter of an inch thick and all of them 
held together at the back by the black skin. Thus 
minced the horse pieces are pitch-forked int<3 



CUTTING IN AND TRYING OUT 147 

the caldrons that are kept bubbling with boiling 
oil. When the oil has been boiled out of them, 
the horse-pieces, now shrunken and twisted into 
hard, brittle lumps, called " scrap," are skimmed 
off and thrown into a vat at the port side of the 
try-works to be used later as fuel in trying out 
the remainder of the blubber. The oil is ladled 
off into a cooling vat at the starboard side where, 
after it has cooled, it is siphoned into hogsheads 
or tanks and these are later stowed in the 
hold. 

The trying out of the whale gave several deli- 
cacies to the forecastle menu. Hardtack biscuit 
soaked in buckets of sea water and then boiled 
in the bubbling caldrons of oil made relishing 
morsels. The crisp, tried-out blubber, which 
looked like honey-comb, was palatable to some. 
Black whale skin freed of blubber and cut into 
small cubes and pickled in salt and vinegar had 
a rather agreeable taste, though it was much 
like eating pickled rubber. These things with 
whale steaks and whale sausages made trying- 
out days a season of continual feasting. 

At night " scrap " was put into an iron basket 
swung between the two chimneys of the try- 



148 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

works and set on fire, making a flaring yellow 
blaze which lighted the ship from stem to stern 
and threw weird shadows everywhere. The 
beacon not only gave us plenty of light to work 
by, but advertised the brig's good luck to any 
ship which happened in sight of us. In the 
blubber-room, holes were cut in a blanket piece 
and rope yarns, having been rubbed upon the 
blubber, were coiled in the hole and lighted. As 
they burned they lighted the oil from the blub- 
ber. These unique lamps had all the oil in a 
ten-ton blanket piece to draw on. It was only 
the wick that ever gave out. New strands of 
rope yarn had to be provided from time to time. 
Three or four of these lamps blazing and splut- 
tering made the blubber-room bright. 

Working night and day, it took three daj^s 
to cut in and try out the whale. While the work 
was going on, the decks were so greasy that we 
could run and slide anywhere for long distances 
like boys on ice. After the whale had been tried 
out and the oil casks had been stowed below, we 
fell upon the decks and paint work with lye and 
water. Hard work soon had the ship looking 
as bright as a new pin. 



CHAPTER XIII 

SHAKING HANDS WITH SIBERIA 

THE ship's prow was turned northward af- 
ter work on the whale had been finished. 
I expected we would soon run into the ice 
again. k We sailed on and on, but not a block 
of ice big enough to make a highball did we sight. 
The white floes and drifts and the frozen conti- 
nent floating southward, along the coasts of 
which we had cruised for whales and which had 
surrounded us and held us captive for three 
weeks, had disappeared entirely. The warm 
water from the south, the southern winds, and 
the spring sunshine had melted the ice. Its ut- 
ter disappearance savored of magic. 

A long hilly coast rose ahead of us covered 
with grass, barren of trees or shrubs, dotted with 
blackened skeletons of old ice — an utterly deso- 
late land. It was Siberia. We put into a bight 

149 



150 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

called St. Lawrence Bay. There was an Es- 
kimo village on the shore. The huts were made 
of whale ribs covered with hides of walrus and 
reindeer. In the warm weather, some of the 
hides had been removed and we saw the white 
gleaming bones of the frame work. We could 
see the dogs with tails curling over their backs 
frisking about and could hear their clamor as 
they bayed the great white-winged thing that 
had come up from over the sea's verge. 

In this first part of July it was continuous 
day. The sun set at eleven o'clock at night in 
the northwest. Its disc remained barely below 
the horizon — we could almost see its flaming rim. 
A molten glow of color made the sky resplen- 
dent just above it as it passed across the north 
pole. It rose at 1:30 in the morning high in 
the northeast. All the time it was down a bril- 
liant twilight prevailed — a twilight like that 
which in our temperate zone immediately fol- 
lows the sinking of the sun behind a hill. We 
could see to read without difficulty. 

Soon boats and kyacks were putting off from 
the village. When we were still a mile or two 



SIBERIA 151 

out, strange craft came alongside and Eskimo 
men, women, and children swarmed aboard. 
Very picturesque they looked in clothes made 
of the skins of reindeer, hair seals, dogs, and 
squirrels, oddly trimmed and decorated with fur 
mosaics in queer designs. Some of the women 
wore over their furs a yellow waterproof cloak 
made of the intestines of fish, ornamented with 
needle-work figures and quite neat looking. 

The men and the older women had animal 
faces of low intelligence. The young girls were 
extremely pretty, with glossy, coal-black hair, 
bright black eyes, red cheeks, lips like ripe cher- 
ries, and gleaming white teeth forever showing 
in the laughter of irresponsibility and perfect 
health. 

The captain ordered a bucket of hardtack 
brought out in honor of our guests. The bis- 
cuit were dumped in a pile on the main deck. 
The Eskimos gathered around in a solemn and 
dignified circle. The old men divided the bread, 
giving an equal number of hardtack to each. 

This ceremony of welcome over, the Eskimos 
were given the freedom of the ship, or at least, 



152 A YEAR WITHi A WHALER, 

took it. We kept a careful watch upon them, 
however, to see that they took nothing else. 
Several of the Eskimo men had a sufficient smat- 
tering of English to make themselves under- 
stood. They had picked up their small vocabu- 
lary among the whalers which every spring put 
in at the little ports along the Siberian and 
Alaskan coasts. One of them had been whaling 
to the Arctic Ocean aboard a whale ship which 
some accident had left short handed. He spoke 
better English than any of the others and was 
evidently regarded by his fellow townsmen as a 
wonderfully intellectual person. He became 
quite friendly with me, showing his friendship 
by begging me to give him almost everything I 
had, from tobacco to clothes. He constantly 
used an Eskimo word the meaning of which all 
whalers have learned and it assisted him materi- 
ally in telling his stories — he was a great story 
teller. This word was " pau" — it means " noth- 
ing." I never knew before how important noth- 
ing could be in human language. Here is a 
sample of his use of "nothing:" 

"Winter," he said, "sun pau; daylight pau. 



SIBERIA 15a 

All dark. Water pau; all ice. Land pau, all 
snow. Eskimo igloo, plenty fire. Moss in 
blubber oil all time blaze up. Cold pau. Plenty 
hot. Eskimo, he sweat. Clothes pau. Good 
time. Hot time. Eat plenty. Sleep." 

This seemed to me a good, vivid description. 
The picture was there, painted chiefly with 
" nothing." 

Of course he had the English words u yes " 
and " no " in his assortment, but his way of us- 
ing them was pure Eskimo. For instance: 
" You wear no clothes in winter? " I asked him. 
" No," he replied. " No? " I echoed in surprise. 
" Yes," he said. His " yes " merely affirmed his 
"no." It sometimes required a devious mental 
process to follow him. 

A pretty girl came up to me with a smile and 
an ingratiating air. 

" Tobac," she said holding out her hand. 

I handed her my smoking plug. She took 
half of it at one cavernous bite and gave the re- 
mainder back to me, which I thought consider- 
ate. She enjoyed the tobacco. She chewed 
upon it hard, working her jaws as if she were 



154 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

masticating a dainty tidbit. Did she expector- 
ate? Not a drop. She evidently did not pro- 
pose to waste any of the flavor of that good 
weed. Neither did she get sick — that pretty 
Eskimo girl. At last when she had chewed for 
twenty minutes or so, she removed her quid and 
stuck it behind her right ear. She chewed it at 
intervals later on, always between times wearing 
it conspicuously behind her ear. 

I rather expected our guests would depart 
after a call of an hour or so. Not so. They 
had come to stay indefinitely. When they be- 
came tired they lay on deck — it didn't make any 
particular difference where — and went quietly 
to sleep. They seemed to have no regular time 
for sleeping. I found Eskimos asleep and 
awake during all my deck watches. As it was 
day all the twenty-four hours, I wondered if 
these people without chronometers did not some- 
times get their hours mixed up. 

New parties of Eskimos kept coming to see 
us. One of these had killed a walrus and the 
skin and the raw meat, butchered into portable 
cuts, lay in the bottom of their big family canoe 



SIBERIA 155 

of hide. The boat was tied alongside and the 
Eskimos came aboard. If any of them became 
hungry, they climbed down into the canoe and 
ate the raw walrus meat, smacking their lips 
over it. When the sailors would lean over the 
rail to watch this strange feat of gastronomy, 
the Eskimos would smile up at them with 
mouths smeared with blood and hold out a red 
chunk in invitation. It was their joke. 

We loafed in St. Lawrence Bay for more than 
a week. We could not have sailed away if we 
had wanted to, for all the time there was a wind- 
less calm and the sea heaved and fell, unruffled 
by a ripple, like a vast sheet of moving mercury. 

It was weather characteristic of the Arctic 
summer — a beautiful dream season of halcyon, 
silver seas, opalescent haze, and tempered golden 
sunlight. To the men in skin clothes, it was 
warm weather, but one had only to step from 
sunshine to shadow to pass from summer to win- 
ter. One perspired in the sunlight; in the 
shadow there was frost, and if the spot were 
damp, a coating of ice. 

I went duck hunting with a boat's crew one 



156 A YEAR WITH, A WHALER 

day. Mr. Winchester, who headed the boat, 
was a good hand with a shotgun and brought 
back a fine bag. One of the ducks, knocked 
over on the wing, dropped within a few feet 
of shore. When we rowed to pick it up, I 
touched Siberia with an oar. I felt that it was 
a sort of handshake with the Asiatic continent. 
I never landed and never got any nearer. 

In a little while, most of us had traded for a 
number of nicely tanned hair-seal skins and had 
set the Eskimo women and girls to work tailor- 
ing trousers and vests and coats. It was mar- 
velous how dextrous they were at cutting and 
sewing. They took no measurements and yet 
their garments fitted rather snugly. Before 
they began sewing they softened the edges of 
the skins by chewing them. They wore their 
thimble on their index finger and drove the 
needle into one side of the skins and jerked it 
through from the other side with such amazing 
rapidity that the two movements seemed one. 
A good seamstress — and all seemed remarkably 
expert — could cut and sew a pair of trousers in 
an hour, a bit of work it would have taken a 



SIBERIA 157 

sailor a day or two to accomplish. ,We could 
hire a seamstress for an entire morning or after- 
noon for five hardtack. A bowl of soup with a 
piece of salt horse was sufficient pay for a day's 
labor. 

My old skin clothes, which I had obtained 
from the slop-chest were greasy, dirty, and 
worn and I had an Eskimo woman make me a 
complete new outfit from hair-seal skins I pur- 
chased from her husband. She cut out a coat, 
vest, and trousers, spreading the skins on deck 
and using a knife in cutting. She sat cross- 
legged on deck most of the day sewing on the 
garments and I carefully superintended the job. 
She ornamented the coat with a black dogskin 
collar and edged it down the breast and around 
the bottom with the same material, which set off 
the glistening seal skin attractively. I also 
bought a new squirrel skin shirt with a hood at- 
tached. When I appeared on deck in my new 
toggery, I felt quite presentable. 

However, I was not alone in gorgeous regalia. 
Most of my shipmates were soon looking like 
animate statues of silver in their shining seal 



158 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

skins. Our turns up and down deck became 
fashion parades. We strutted like peacocks, it 
must be admitted, and displayed our fine clothes 
to best advantage under the eyes of the Eskimo 
beauties. 

It remained for Peter, our rolypoly little 
Swede, to make the only real, simon-pure con- 
quest. In his new clothes, which sparkled like 
a silver dollar fresh from the mint, and with his 
fresh boyish face, he cut quite a handsome figure 
and one little Eskimo maid fell a victim to his 
fatal facinations. " 'E's killed her dead," said 
English Bill White. She was perhaps fifteen 
years old, roguish eyed, rosy cheeked, and with 
coal-black hair parted in the middle and falling 
in two braids at the sides of her head. Plump 
and full of life and high spirits, the gay little 
creature was as pretty as any girl I saw among 
the Eskimos. 

Peter was all devotion. He gave his sweet- 
heart the lion's share of all his meals, feasting 
her on salt horse, hardtack, soup, and ginger- 
bread which to her primitive palate that never 
had risen to greater gastronomic heights than 



SIBERIA 159 

blubber and raw meat must have seemed epi- 
curean delicacies. The sailors called the girl 
" Mamie," which was very different from the 
Eskimo name her mother spluttered at her. If 
Peter was missed at any time, it was only neces- 
sary to locate the charming Miss Mamie, and 
there by her side Peter would be found, speaking 
only with his eyes and making distinct progress. 

Sometimes Peter, rinding optical language 
not entirely satisfactory, pressed into his service 
the intellectual Eskimo as interpreter. These 
three-cornered efforts at love making were 
amusing to all who chanced to overhear them; — 
the dashing young Romeo could scarcely talk 
English himself, the interpreter could talk even 
less and the object of Peter's adoration could 
not speak a word. 

As the upshot of this interesting affair, the lit- 
tle lady and Peter plotted between them that 
Peter should run away from the ship and live 
among her people. This plan appealed to Peter 
who was a cold weather product himself and 
almost as primitive as his inamorata. But Peter 
made one mistake; — he took old Nels Nelson, 



160 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

his countryman and side-partner, into his confi- 
dence. Nelson loved the boy like a father and 
did his best to persuade him to give up the idea, 
but Peter was determined. 

One twilight midnight with the sun just skim- 
ming below the horizon, Peter wrapped from 
head to foot in an Eskimo woman's mackintosh 
of fish intestine, with the hood over his head and 
half hiding his chubby face, climbed over the rail 
into an Eskimo boat with a number of natives, 
his sweetheart among them, and set out for 
shore. Nelson and several sailors watched the 
boat paddle away, but no one but Nelson knew 
that the person bundled up in the native rain- 
coat was Peter. The boat got half a mile from 
the brig. Then Nelson could stand it no longer. 
The strain was too much. He rushed back to 
the quarter-deck where old Gabriel was walking 
up and down. 

" Peter's run away," Nelson blurted out. 
" There he goes in that boat. That's him 
dressed up like a woman in fish-gut oil-skins." 

Without ado Gabriel called aft the watch, 
manned a boat, and set out in pursuit. The 





Peter's Sweetheart 



SIBERIA 161 

Eskimo canoe was quickly overhauled and Peter 
was captured and brought back aboard. 

"You ben bigges' fool for sech a liT boy I 
ever have see," said Gabriel severely, "you 
don't know you freeze to deaf up here in winter 
time, no? " 

Peter had nothing to say. He was ashamed, 
but he was mad, too. He was not punished. 
When Captain Shorey learned of the escapade, 
he merely laughed. Peter took the matter 
quite to heart and pouted for days. To the end 
of the voyage, he still dreamed of his Eskimo 
sweetheart and of the happiness that might have 
been his. Every time he spoke of her his eyes 

grew bright. "She was fine gal," he used to 
say. 



CHAPTER XIV 

ffiTOONSHINE AND HYGIENE 

WE noticed that several of our Eskimo 
guests appeared at times to be slightly 
under the influence of liquor and 
thought perhaps they had obtained gin or rum 
from some whaling vessel that had touched at 
the port before we arrived. We asked the in- 
tellectual Eskimo where these fellows had got 
their booze. He pointed to an Eskimo and 
said, " Him." 

" Him" was a lordly person dressed in elabor- 
ately trimmed and ornamented skin clothes. 
From the way he strutted about, we had fancied 
him a chief. He turned out be a " moonshiner. 3 ' 
This doubtless will surprise those whose ideas 
of " moonshiners " are associated with southern 
Appalachian ranges, lonely mountain coves, rev- 
enue raids, and romance. But here was an Es- 

162 



MOONSHINE AND HYGIENE 163 

kimo " moonshiner " who made unlicensed whis- 
key under the midnight sun and yet was as gen- 
uine a " moonshiner " as any lawless southern 
mountaineer. The sailors, being thirsty souls, 
at once opened negotiations with him for liquor. 
He drew from beneath his deer-skin coat a skin 
bottle filled with liquor and sold it to us for fif- 
teen hardtack. Wherefore there was, for a 
time, joy in the forecastle — in limited quantity, 
for the bottle was small. This product of the 
ice-bound North was the hottest stuff I ever 
tasted. 

The captain was not long in discovering that 
the Eskimo had liquor to sell and sent a boat 
ashore with a demijohn. The jug was brought 
back filled with Siberian " moonshine," which 
had been paid for with a sack of flour. The 
boat's crew found on the beach a little distillery 
in comparison with which the pot stills of the 
Kentucky and Tennessee mountains, made of 
old kitchen kettles would seem elaborate and 
up-to-date plants. The still itself was an old 
tin oil can; the worm, a twisted gun barrel; the 
flake-stand, a small powder keg. The mash 



164 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

used in making the liquor, we learned, was a fer- 
mented mixture of flour and molasses obtained 
in trade from whale ships. It was boiled in the 
still, a twist of moss blazing in a pan of blubber 
oil doing duty as a furnace. The vapor from 
the boiling mash passed through the worm in 
the flake-stand and was condensed by ice-cold 
water with which the powder keg was kept con- 
stantly filled by hand. The liquor dripped 
from the worm into a battered old tomato can. 
It was called " kootch " and was potently in- 
toxicating. An Eskimo drunk on " kootch " 
was said to be brave enough to tackle a polar 
bear, single-handed. The little still was oper- 
ated in full view of the villagers. There was no 
need of secrecy. Siberia boasted no revenue 
raiders. 

The owner of the plant did an extensive trade 
up and down the coast and it was said natives 
from Diomede Islands and Alaska paddled over 
in their canoes and bidarkas to buy his liquor. 
They paid for it in walrus tusk ivory, whale 
bone, and skins and the " moonshiner " was the 
richest man in all that part of Siberia. 



MOONSHINE AND HYGIENE 165 

If contact with civilization had taught the Es- 
kimo the art of distillation and drunkenness, it 
also had improved living conditions among 
them. Many owned rifles. Their spears and 
harpoons were steel tipped. They bartered for 
flour, molasses, sugar, and all kinds of canned 
goods with the whale ships every summer. 
They had learned to cook. There was a stove 
in the village. The intellectual Eskimo boasted 
of the stove as showing the high degree of civili- 
zation achieved by his people. The stove, be it 
added, was used chiefly for heating purposes 
in winter and remained idle in summer. The 
natives regarded the cooked foods of the white 
man as luxuries to be indulged in only occasion- 
ally in a spirit of connoisseurship. They still 
preferred their immemorial diet of blubber and 
raw meat. 

Aside from these faint touches of civilization, 
the Eskimos were as primitive in their life and 
mental processes as people who suddenly had 
stepped into the present out of the world of 
ten thousand years ago. I fancy Adam and 
Eve would have lived after the manner of the 



166 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

Eskimos if the Garden of Eden had been close 
to the North Pole. 

There is apparently no government or law 
among these Eskimos. They have no chiefs. 
When it becomes necessary to conduct any busi- 
ness of public importance with outsiders, it is 
looked after by the old men. The Eskimos are 
a race, one may say, of individuals. Each one 
lives his life according to his own ideas; without 
let or hindrance. Each is a law unto himself. 
Under these conditions one might expect they 
would hold to the rule of the strong arm under 
which might makes right. This is far from true. 
There is little crime among them. Murder is 
extremely rare. Though they sometimes steal 
from white men — the sailors on the brig were 
warned that they would steal anything not nailed 
down — they are said never — or hardly ever — to 
steal from each other. They have a nice respect' 
for the rights of their neighbors. They are not 
exactly a Golden Rule people, but they mind 
their own business. 

The infrequency of crime among them seems 
stranger when one learns that they never punish 



MOONSHINE AND HYGIENE 167 

their children. Eskimo children out-Topsy 
Topsy in " just growing." I was informed that 
they are never spanked, cuffed, or boxed on the 
ears. Their little misdemeanors are quietly ig- 
nored. It might seem logical to expect these 
ungoverned and lawless little fellows to grow up 
into bad men and women. But the ethical tradi- 
tion of the race holds them straight. 

When a crime occurs, the punishment meted 
out fits it as exactly as possible. We heard of a 
murder among the Eskimos around St. Law- 
rence Bay the punishment of which furnishes a 
typical example of Eskimo justice. A young 
man years before had slain a missionary by 
shooting him with a rifle. The old men of the 
tribe tried the murderer and condemned him to 
death. His own father executed the sentence 
with the same rifle with which the missionary 
had been killed. 

Tuberculosis is a greater scourge among the 
Eskimos than among the peoples of civilization. 
This was the last disease I expected to find in 
the cold, pure air of the Arctic region. But I 
was told that it caused more than fifty per cent. 



168 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

of the deaths among the natives. These condi- 
tions have been changed for the better within the 
last few years. School teachers, missionaries, and 
traveling physicians appointed by the United 
States government have taught the natives of 
Alaska hygiene and these have passed on the 
lesson to their kinsmen of Siberia. Long after 
my voyage had ended, Captain A. J. Hender- 
son, of the revenue cutter Thetis and a pioneer 
judge of Uncle Sam's " floating court " in Beh- 
ring Sea and Arctic Ocean waters, told me of 
the work he had done in spreading abroad the 
gospel of health among the Eskimos. 

Finding tuberculosis carrying off the natives 
by wholesale, Captain Henderson began the 
first systematic crusade against the disease dur- 
ing a summer voyage of his vessel in the north. 
In each village at which the Thetis touched, he 
took the ship's doctor ashore and had him deliver 
through an interpreter a lecture on tuberculosis. 
Though the Eskimos lived an out-door life in 
summer, they shut themselves up in their igloos 
in winter, venturing out only when necessity 
compelled them, and living in a super-heated at- 






i w^p; 



z. 




-»> •' 



% 










MOONSHINE AND HYGIENE 169 

mosphere without ventilation. As a result their 
winter igloos became veritable culture beds of 
the disease. 

Those afflicted had no idea what was the mat- 
ter with them. Their witch doctors believed 
that they were obsessed by devils and attempted 
by incantations to exorcise the evil spirits. The 
doctor of the Thetis had difficulty in making the 
natives understand that the organism that caused 
their sickness was alive, though invisible. But 
he did succeed in making them understand that 
the disease was communicated by indiscriminate 
expectoration and that prevention and cure lay 
in plenty of fresh air, cleanliness, and whole- 
some food. 

In all the villages, Captain Henderson found 
the igloos offensively filthy and garbage and 
offal scattered about the huts in heaps. He made 
the Eskimos haul these heaps to sea in boats and 
dump them overboard. He made them clean 
their igloos thoroughly and take off the roofs 
to allow the sun and rains to purify the interiors. 
After this unroofing, Captain Henderson said, 
the villages looked as if a cyclone had struck 



170 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

them. He taught the natives how to sew to- 
gether sputum cups of skin and cautioned the 
afflicted ones against expectoration except in 
these receptacles. 

The Eskimos were alive to the seriousness of 
the situation and did their utmost to follow out 
these hygienic instructions to the last detail. As 
a result of this first missionary campaign in the 
cause of health, the Eskimos have begun to keep 
their igloos clean and to ventilate them in winter. 
There has grown up among them an unwritten 
law against indiscriminate expectoration more 
carefully observed than such ordinances in 
American cities. The villages have been gradu- 
ally turned into open-air sanitariums and the 
death rate from tuberculosis has been materially 
reduced. 



CHAPTER XV 



NEWS FROM HOME 



WITH the first breeze, we set sail for 
Port Clarence, Alaska, the northern 
rendezvous of the Arctic Ocean whal- 
ing fleet in early summer. There in the latter 
part of June or the early part of July, the fleet 
always met the four-masted schooner Jennie, 
the tender from San Francisco, by which all 
firms in the whaling trade sent mail and sup- 
plies to their vessels. On our way across from 
Siberia to Alaska, we passed just south of 
Behring Straits and had our first distant glimpse 
of the Arctic Ocean. When we dropped anchor 
in the windy roadstead of Port Clarence, eight- 
een whale ships were there ahead of us. 

The land about Port Clarence was flat and 
covered with tall, rank grass — a region of tun- 
dra stretching away to distant hills. The Jen- 

171 



172 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

nie came in direct from San Francisco soon af- 
ter we arrived. Boats from the whale ships 
swarmed about her as soon as she dropped an- 
chor, eager for letters and newspapers. Our 
mate brought back a big bundle of San Fran- 
cisco newspapers which were sent forward after 
the cabin had read them. They gave us our 
first news since leaving Honolulu of how the 
great world was wagging. Every man in the 
forecastle who could read read these papers 
from the first headline to the last advertisement. 
It seemed good to get into touch once more with 
the men and events of civilization. Exiles of 
the sea, the news of our country seemed to have 
an intimate personal meaning to us which it 
never could possibly have to stay-at-homes to 
whom newspapers are every-day, casual budgets 
of gossip and information. I remember that a 
telegraphic brevity describing a murder in my 
native state seemed like a message from home. 
Among the Eskimos who came aboard the 
brig from the large village on shore, was a white 
man dressed like an Eskimo to the last detail 
and looking like one except for a heavy beard. 



NEWS FROM HOME 173 

He had run away from a whale ship three years 
before, hoping to make his way to some white 
settlement to the south and there secure passage 
on shipboard back to San Francisco. He had 
escaped, he said, in an Eskimo kyack tied along- 
side his ship. As soon as he was missed officers 
and boatsteerers put ashore in a boat and trailed 
him. He led his pursurers a long chase inland 
and though he was shot at several times, he man- 
aged to elude them and reach the safety of the 
hills. 

After he had seen the whaling fleet sail away, 
he ventured back to the Eskimo village on shore 
where he was welcomed by the natives. He 
soon found that escape by land was practically 
impossible; the nearest white settlement was 
hundreds of miles distant and he would have to 
thread his way through pathless forests and 
across ranges of mountains covered at all sea- 
sons with ice and snow. Moreover, he learned 
what he should have known before he ran away 
that no vessels except whaling ships, their ten- 
der, and an occasional revenue cutter ever 
touched at Port Clarence which at that time was 



174 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

far north of the outmost verge of the world's 
commerce. There was nothing left for him to 
do but settle among the Eskimos and wait for 
the arrival of the whaling fleet in the following 
summer. 

During the long Arctic night, with the tem- 
perature forty and fifty degrees below zero, he 
lived in an igloo after the manner of the natives ; 
learned to eat raw meat and blubber — there was 
nothing else to eat — became fluent in the Es- 
kimo language; and took an Eskimo girl for a 
wife. He found existence among these human 
anachronisms left over from the stone age a 
monotonously dreary and soul-wearying experi- 
ence, and he waited with nervous impatience for 
the coming of the fleet with its annual oppor- 
tunity for getting back to civilization. 

The first year passed and the ships anchored in 
Port Clarence. He hurried out in his kyack to 
ask the Captains for permission to work his way 
back to San Francisco. He never once doubted 
that they would give him his chance. But a 
sad surprise was in store for him. From ship to 
ship he went, begging to be allowed to remain 



NEWS FROM HOME 175 

aboard, but the hard-hearted captains coldly re- 
fused him, one after the other. He was a de- 
serter, they told him; he had made his bed and 
he could lie in it; to take him away would en- 
courage others to desert. Some captains cursed 
him; some ordered him off their vessels. Fi- 
nally the ships sailed away for the whaling 
grounds, leaving him marooned on the bleak 
shore to pass another year in the squalor of his 
igloo. 

Next year when the whaling fleet came again 
it was the same story over again. Again he 
watched the ships arrive with a heart beating 
high with hope and again he saw their topmasts 
disappear over the horizon, leaving him hopeless 
and wretched behind. Before he came aboard 
the brig, he had made the rounds of the other 
ships and had met with the same refusals as of 
yore. I saw him go aft and plead with Captain 
Shorey and that stern old sea dog turned him 
down as curtly as the other skippers had done. 
The ships sailed away, leaving him to his fate. 
To me his story was the most pathetic that ever 
fell within my personal experience. I never 



176 A YEAR WITH A WHALEE 

learned whether he ever managed somehow to 
get back home or left his bones to bleach upon 
the frozen tundra. 

From Port Clarence, we headed back to Un- 
alaska to ship our whale bone to San Francisco 
by steamer. Midway of our run down the 
Behring Sea a thick fog closed about us and we 
kept our fog horn booming. Soon, off our 
bows, we heard another fog horn. It seemed to 
be coming closer. Our cooper, an old navy bug- 
ler, became suspicious. He got out his old 
bugle and sounded " assembly " sharply. As 
the first note struck into the mist, the other fog 
horn ceased its blowing. We did not hear it 
again. When the mist lifted, no vessel was in 
sight, but the situation was clear. We had 
chanced upon a poaching sealer and when she 
heard our cooper's bugle, she concluded we were 
a revenue cutter and took to her heels. 

A day or two later, we saw the revenue cutter 
Corwin chasing a poacher. Heeled over under 
crowded sail, the sealing schooner was scurrying 
before a stiff wind. The Corwin was plowing 
in hot pursuit, smoke pouring from her funnel 




o 



NEWS FROM HOME 177 

and hanging thick in the wake of the chase. 
She was gaining steadily, for she was a steam- 
ship and the schooner had only her sails to de- 
pend on. Finally the revenue cutter sent a 
solid shot across the schooner's bows. The ball 
knocked up a great splash of water. But the 
poacher did not heave to — just kept on her way, 
leaning so far over that the clews of her lower 
sails almost touched the waves and a big white 
feather of spray stood up in front of her. So 
pursuer and pursued passed over the horizon 
and we did not see the end of the hunt. But 
we knew that there could be but one end. The 
fate of that poacher was sealed. Only a fog 
could save her, and the sky was clear. 

We passed close to St. George Island, the 
southernmost of the Pribiloff group, the breeding 
place of the fur seals. As we came near the 
shores, the air literally shook with the raucous, 
throbbing bark of countless seals. The din was 
deafening. Along the shore, a shelving beach 
ran up to rocky declivities and beach and rocks 
were packed with seals. There may have been 
a hundred thousand; there may have been a mil- 



- 



178 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

lion ; and it seemed as if every seal was barking. 
The water alongshore swarmed with them. 
Thousands of heads were sticking out of the sea. 
Thousands of other seals were playing, breach- 
ing out of the water like porpoises. They swam 
close to the brig and floated lazily on the surface, 
staring at us unafraid. If we had been poach- 
ers, I should think we could have taken several 
hundred thousand dollars worth of seals without 
difficulty. 

A dozen little pup seals whose fur was of a 
snowy and unspotted white came swimming 
about the vessel. These sea babies were soft, 
furry, cunning little fellows and they paddled 
about the brig, sniffing at the strange monster 
that had invaded their home. They seemed ab- 
solutely fearless and gazed up at us out of big, 
brown, wondering, friendly eyes. Sealers kill 
them, as their fur makes beautiful edgings and 
borders for fur garments. 

The fur seals are supposed to pass the winter 
somewhere in the South Pacific, but whether in 
the open sea or on land has never been definitely 
learned. From their mysterious southern hid- 



NEWS FROM HOME 179 

ing places, they set out for the North in the 
early spring. They first appear in March in 
the waters off California. Coastwise vessels 
find the sea alive with thousands of them. They 
travel slowly northward following the coast line, 
fifty or a hundred miles out at sea, feeding on 
fish and sleeping on the surface. Regularly 
each year in April, a revenue cutter setting out 
from Port Townsend for patrol service in 
Behring Sea and Arctic Ocean waters, picks up 
the herd and convoys it to the Pribiloffs to guard 
it against the attacks of poachers. The seals 
swarm through the passes between the Aleutian 
islands in May and arrive at the Pribiloffs in 
the latter part of that month or early in June. 
They remain on the Pribiloffs during the 
breeding and rearing season and begin to depart 
for the South again in the latter part of Sep- 
tember. They are all gone as a rule by Novem- 
ber, though in some years the last ones do not 
leave until December. They are again seen as 
they crowd through the Aleutian channels, but 
all track of them is lost a few hundred miles to 
the south. At what destination they finally ar- 



180 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

rive on that southward exodus no man knows. 
It is one of the mysteries of the sea. 

We saw no whales on our southward passage 
and did not much expect to see any, though we 
kept a lookout at the mast-head on the off 
chance of sighting some lone spout. The sum- 
mer months are a second " between seasons," 
dividing the spring whaling in Behring Sea from 
that in the Arctic Ocean in the fall. The 
whales had all followed the retreating ice north- 
ward through Behring Straits. 

The Fourth of July found us in the middle 
of Behring Sea. We observed the glorious 
Fourth by hoisting the American flag to our 
gaff-topsail peak, where it fluttered all day long. 
Mr. Winchester came forward with two bottles 
of Jamaica rum and dealt out a drink all 
around. 

We entered Unalaska harbor by the same 
long, narrow, and precipitous channel through 
which we had passed on our voyage north when 
we put into the harbor to have the captain's leg 
set. Negotiating this channel — I should say it 
was about two miles long — was another illustra- 



NEWS FROM HOME 181 

tion of our captain's seamanship. We had to 
tack innumerable times from one side of the 
channel to the other, our jib-boom at every tack 
projecting over the land before the brig came 
around. We finally dropped anchor opposite 
the old, cross-crowned Greek church which 
stands in the center of the struggling village. 



CHAPTER XVI 

SLIM GOES ON STRIKE 

IT was the heart of the Arctic summer and 
the high hills that rose all about the town 
were green with deep grass — it looked as if 
it would reach a man's waist — and ablaze with 
wild flowers. I was surprised to see such a riot 
of blooms in this far northern latitude, but there 
they were, and every off-shore breeze was sweet 
with their fragrance. The village was dingy 
enough, but the country looked alluring and, as 
the day after we dropped anchor was Sunday 
and nothing to do aboard, the crew decided to 
ask for a day's liberty ashore. Bill White, the 
Englishman, and Slim, our Royal Life Guards- 
man, agreed to act as the forecastle's ambassa- 
dors to the cabin. They dressed up in their 
smartest clothes and went aft to interview Cap- 
tain Shorey on the quarter-deck. White made 

182 



SLIM GOES ON STRIKE 183 

the speech of the occasion and proffered the 
forecastle's request in his best rhetoric. Cap- 
tain Shorey puffed silently at his cigar. " I'll 
see about it," he said. That closed the incident 
as far as the captain was concerned. We got 
no shore leave. 

As the day wore away and the desired permis- 
sion failed to materialize, the forecastle became 
piqued at what it considered the skipper's gra- 
tuitous ungraciousness. Slim waxed particu- 
larly indignant. 

" He'll ' see about it,' " Slim sneered. " He 
never had no idea of letting us go in the first 
place. He's a cold-blooded son of a sea cook — 
that's what he is — and as for me, I'll never do 
another tap of work aboard the bloody hooker." 

This was strong language. Of course, none 
of us took it seriously, feeling sure Slim would 
reconsider by the next morning and turn to for 
work with the rest of us. But we did not know 
Slim. Bright and early Monday morning, the 
men mustered on deck and went to work, but 
Slim remained in his bunk. 

Having rowed our whale bone to the dock and 



184 A YEAR WITH, A WHALER 

stored it in a warehouse to await the first steamer 
for San Francisco, a boat's crew towed three or 
four hogsheads roped together ashore for water. 
Another boat went ashore for coal. Those left 
aboard the brig were put to work in the hold 
near the main hatch under the supervision of 
Mr. Winchester. The mate suddenly noted 
Slim's absence. 

"Where's Slim?" he asked. 

Nobody answered. 

" He didn't go ashore in the boats,'" said the 
mate. " Where is he? " 

Someone volunteered that Slim was sick. 

" Sick, eh? " said the mate. 

He hustled off to the forecastle scuttle. 

" Slim," he sang out, " what's the matter with 
you?" 

" I'm sick," responded Slim from his bunk. 

" If you're sick," said the mate, " come aft 
and report yourself sick to the captain." 

In a little while, Slim shuffled back to the 
cabin. A few minutes later wild yells came 
from the cabin. We stopped work. The mate 
seemed to think we might rush to the rescue. 



SLIM GOES ON STRIKE 185 

" Get busy there," he roared. " Slew that 
cask around." 

The yells broke off. We went to work again. 
For a half hour, there was silence in the cabin. 
We wondered what had happened. Slim might 
have been murdered for all we knew. Finally 
Slim emerged and went silently forward. We 
noticed a large shaved spot on the top of his 
head where two long strips of court-plaster 
formed a black cross. 

The first thing Slim did after getting back to 
the forecastle was to take one of his blue flannel 
shirts and, while none of the officers was look- 
ing, shin up the ratlines and hang it on the fore- 
lift. This is an old-time sailor sign of distress 
and means trouble aboard. The mate soon 
spied the shirt swinging in the breeze. 

"Well, I'll be darned," he said. "Jump up 
there one of you and take that shirt down." 

No one stirred. The mate called the cabin 
boy and the young Kanaka brought down the 
shirt. Slim told us at dinner time all about his 
adventure in the cabin. 

" I goes down in the cabin," said Slim, " and 



186 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

the captain is standing with his hands in his 
pants pockets, smiling friendly-like. ' Hello, 
Slim,' he says. ' Sit down in this chair.' I sits 
down and the captain says, ' Well, my boy, 
what's the matter with you? ' • I'm sick,' says 
I. * Where do you feel bad? ' he says. ' I ache 
all over,' says I. He steps over in front of me, 
still with that little smile on his face. * I've got 
good medicine aboard this ship,' he says, * and I'll 
fix you up in a jiffy, my boy,' says he. With 
that he jerks one of his hands out of his pocket 
and he has a revolver clutched in it. ' Here's 
the medicine you need,' he says and he bats me 
over the cocoanut with the gun. 

" The blood spurts all over me and I jumps 
up and yells, but the captain points his pistol 
at me and orders me to sit down again. He 
storms up and down the cabin floor. ' I'll teach 
you who's master aboard this ship,' he shouts 
and for a minute he was so purple in the face 
with rage, I thought he was going to murder me 
for sure. By and by he cools down. ' Well, 
Slim,' he says, ' I guess I hit you a little harder 
than I meant to, but I'm a bad man when I get 



SLIM GOES ON STRIKE 187 

started. You need tending to now, sure 
enough/ 

" So he has the cabin boy fetch a pan of warm 
water and he washes the blood out of my hair 
with his own hands and then shaves around the 
cut and pastes sticking plaster on. That's all. 
But say, will I have the law on him when we get 
back to Frisco? Willi?" 

It was a long way back to Frisco. In the 
meantime we wondered what was in store for 
the luckless Irish grenadier. 

That afternoon, the revenue cutter Corwin 
came steaming into port towing a poaching 
sealer as a prize. It was the same schooner, 
We learned, we had seen the Corwin chasing a 
few days before. As the cutter passed us, Slim 
sprang on the forecastle head while Captain 
Shorey and everybody aboard the brig looked at 
him and, waving a blue flannel shirt frantically, 
shouted : " Please come aboard. I've had 
trouble aboard." " Aye, aye," came back across 
the water from the government patrol vessel. 
Waving a shirt has no significance in sea tradi- 
tion, but Slim was not enough of a sailor to 



188 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

know that, and besides, he wanted to leave notK- 
ing undone to impress the revenue cutter officers 
with the urgency of his case. 

No sooner had the Corwin settled to her berth 
at the pier than a small boat with bluejackets 
at the oars, two officers in gold braid and epaul- 
ettes in the stern, and with the stars and stripes 
flying, shot out from under her quarter and 
headed for the brig. 

" Aha," we chuckled. " Captain Shorey has 
got his foot in it. He has Uncle Sam to deal 
with now. He won't hit him over the head with 
a revolver." 

The boat came alongside and the officers 
climbed over the rail. Captain Shorey wel- 
comed them with a smile and elaborate courtesy 
and ushered them into the cabin. Slim was sent 
for. 

" Tell 'em everything, Slim," we urgeicL 
" Give it to the captain hot and heavy. He's a 
brute and the revenue cutter men will take you 
off the brig as sure as shooting. They won't 
dare leave you aboard to lead a dog's life for 
the rest of the voyage." 



SLIM GOES ON STRIKE 189 

" I'll show him up, all right," was Slim's part- 
ing shot. 

Slim came back from the cabin a little later. 

" I told 'em everything," he said. " They 
listened to everything I had to say and took 
down a lot of notes in a book. I asked 'em to 
take me off the brig right away, for, says I, 
Captain Shorey will kill me if they leave me 
aboard. I guess they'll take me off." 

An hour later, the two officers of the Corwin 
emerged from the cabin, accompanied by Cap- 
tain Shorey. They were puffing complacently 
at a couple of the captain's cigars. They 
seemed in high good humor. After shaking 
hands with Captain Shorey, they climbed down 
into their boat and were rowed back to their 
vessel. That was the last we ever saw of them. 
Poor Slim was left to his fate. 

And his fate was a rough one. There was 
no outward change in the attitude of the captain 
or the officers of the brig toward him. When- 
ever they spoke to him, they did it with as much 
civility as they showed the rest of us. But Slim 
was compelled to work on deck all day and stand 



190 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

his regular night watches into the bargain. That 
meant he got eight hours sleep during twenty- 
four hours one day and four hours sleep during 
the next. As the ship was in whaling waters 
from now on, the crew had little to do except 
man the boats. But Slim always had plenty 
to do. While we smoked our pipes and lounged 
about, he was kept washing paint work, slush- 
ing down masts, scraping deck and knocking the 
rust off the anchors. Any one of a hundred 
and one little jobs that didn't need doing, Slim 
did. This continued until the brig squared her 
yards for the homeward voyage. Slim had more 
than three months of it. The Lord knows it 
was enough. When his nagging finally ended, 
he was a pale, haggard shadow of his former self. 
It almost killed him. 



CHAPTER XVII 



INTO THE AKCTIC 



FROM Unalaska, we headed north for the 
Arctic Ocean. For one day of calm, we 
lay again off the little Eskimo village of 
St. Lawrence Bay and again had the natives as 
our guests. Peter made an elaborate toilet in 
expectation of seeing once more his little Es- 
kimo sweetheart, but she did not come aboard. 
A little breeze came walking over the sea and 
pushed us on nortnward. On August 15, we 
sailed through Behring Straits and were at last 
in the Arctic. 

The straits are thirty-six miles wide, with East 
Cape, a rounded, dome-shaped mass of black 
basalt, on the Asiatic side and on the American 
side Cape Prince of Wales, a headland of 
sharper outline, but neither so lofty nor so sheer. 

In between the two capes and in line with them, 

191 



192 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

lie the two islands of Big and Little Diomede. 
Through the three narrow channels between the 
capes and the islands, the tide runs with the 
swiftness of a river's current. 

The Eskimos constantly cross from continent 
to continent in small boats. In still weather the 
passage can be made in a light kyack with per- 
fect safety. The widest of the three channels 
is that between Big Diomede and East Cape 
and is, I should say, not more than fifteen miles 
across. While we were passing through the 
straits, we saw a party of Eskimos in a skin boat 
paddling leisurely across from America to Asia. 
They no doubt had been on a visit to relatives 
or friends on the neighboring continent. We 
were told that in winter when the straits are 
frozen solidly, the Eskimos frequently walk from 
one continent to the other. 

While we were sailing close to the American 
shore soon after passing through the straits, the 
cry of " Walrus, walrus ! " from the mast-head 
sent the crew hurrying to the rail to catch a 
glimpse of these strange creatures which we had 
not before encountered. We were passing an 




Our Guests Coming Aboard in St. Lawrence Bay 



INTO THE ARCTIC 193 

immense herd. The shore was crowded with 
giant bulks, lying perfectly still in the sun, while 
the waters close to land were alive with bobbing 
heads. At a distance and at first glance, those 
on shore looked like a vast herd of cattle resting 
after grazing. They were as big as oxen and 
when the sun had dried them, they were of a 
pronounced reddish color. Those in the water 
looked black. 

They had a way of sticking their heads and 
necks straight up out of the sea which was 
slightly suggestive of men treading water. 
Their heads seemed small for their great bodies 
and with their big eyes, their beard-like mass of 
thick bristles about the nose, and their long 
ivory tusks they had a distinctly human look 
despite their grotesque ugliness. They lifted 
their multitudinous voices in gruff, barking roars 
like so many bulldogs affected with a cold. 
There must have been 10,000 of them. They 
paid little attention to the ship. Those on shore 
remained as motionless as boulders. 

' Want to collect a little ivory? " Captain 
Shorey said with a smile to Mr. Winchester. 



194 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

" No, thank you, not just now," replied the 
mate. "I want to live to get back to 
'Frisco." 

An ivory hunter among those tusked thou- 
sands doubtless would have fared disastrously. 
Walrus are famous fighters. When attacked, 
they sometimes upset a boat with their tusks 
and drown the hunters. They are dangerous 
even in small herds. Moreover they are difficult 
to kill. Their thick hides will turn a bullet 
that does not hit them solidly. Though slow 
and unwieldy on land or ice, they are surpris- 
ingly agile in the water and a harpooned walrus 
will frequently tow a boat at a dizzy clip. 

The region about Cape Prince of Wales is a 
favorite feeding ground for the animals. The 
coasts swarm with clams, mussels, and other 
shell-fish upon which the walrus live. Thirteen 
varieties of edible clams, it is said, have been dis- 
covered by scientists about Cape Prince of 
Wales. The walrus dig these shell-fish out of 
the sand and rocks with their tusks, crush them 
with their teeth, eject the shells, and swallow 
the dainty tidbits. Their tusks serve them also 



INTO THE ARCTIC 195 

as weapons of defense and as hooks by which 
to haul themselves upon ice floes. 

We did not dare take chances in the boats 
among such vast numbers of these formidable 
creatures and soon left the great herd astern. 
A little higher up the coast we ran into a small 
herd numbering about a hundred, and Mr. Win- 
chester, armed with his repeating rifle, lowered 
his boat to have a try for ivory. 

When the mate's boat dashed among the ani- 
mals they did not dive or run away, but held 
their ground, standing well up out of water and 
coughing out defiance. Long John darted a 
harpoon into one of the beasts and it plunged 
below and went scurrying away. One might 
have thought the boat was fast to a young whale 
from the way the line sizzled out over the bow. 
The walrus dragged the boat about half a mile, 
and when the animal again came to the surface 
for air Mr. Winchester killed it with a bullet. 

But the blood and the shooting had thrown 
the remainder of the herd into violent excite- 
ment. Roaring furiously, the great beasts con- 
verged from all sides in the wake of the chase. 



196 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

By the time Long John had cut off the head of 
the dead walrus and heaved it aboard and had 
recovered his harpoon, the animals were swarm- 
ing menacingly about the boat. Long John, 
who had been in such ticklish situations before, 
began to beat a tattoo on the gunwales with his 
sheath knife, at the same time emitting a series 
of blood-curdling yells. This was intended to 
awe the boat's besiegers and had a momentary 
effect. The brutes stood in the water appar- 
ently puzzled, but still roaring savagely. But 
they were not long to be held off by mere noise. 
Led by a monster bull, they rushed at the boat in 
a concerted attack. The sailors belabored them 
over the head with the sweeps. The mate pumped 
lead into them from his rifle. Still they came on. 

When Captain Shorey, who had been watch- 
ing the battle from the quarter-deck, saw how 
serious the situation was becoming, he grew 
alarmed. 

" Those men will be killed," he shouted to 
Mr. Landers. " Call the watch and lower those 
other boats, and be quick about it." 

In a jiffy the boats were lowered, the crews 



INTO THE ARCTIC 197 

piled in, masts were stepped, and we shot away 
to the rescue. But the mate's crew solved their 
own problem before we could come into action. 
When it seemed likely the walrus would swamp 
the boat, Long John harpooned the leader of the 
herd. The big walrus dived and made off, haul- 
ing the boat out of the midst of the furious 
brutes to safety. The other animals did not pur- 
sue. They bobbed about the scene of the conflict 
for some time and finally disappeared. Long 
John killed the big bull to which the boat was 
fast, cut off its head, and the boat went back to 
the battleground to take similar toll of the wal- 
rus that had died under the mate's rain of bul- 
lets. Eight carcasses were found afloat and as 
many more probably had sunk. 

Ten heads with their ivory tusks were brought 
aboard the brig as trophies of the hunt. The 
tusks of the bull that had led the attack meas- 
ured two feet six inches. The animal, according 
to Mr. Winchester, must have been ten or twelve 
feet long. The mate estimated its weight at 
1,800 pounds — a guess, of course, but perhaps 
a close one. 



CHAPTER XVIII 



BLUBBER AND SONG 



WE were cruising in open water soon 
afterward with two whaling ships in 
sight, the Reindeer and the Helen 
Marr, both barkentines and carrying five boats 
each, when we raised a school of bowheads 
straight ahead and about five miles distant. 
There were twenty-five or thirty whales and a 
broad patch of sea was covered with their inces- 
sant fountains. The other ships saw them about 
the same time. The long-drawn, musical " Blo- 
o-o-w! " from their mastheads came to us across 
the water. Aboard the brig, the watch was 
called and all hands were mustered to the boats. 
Falls were thrown off the hooks and we stood 
by to lower as soon as the captain gave the word. 
There was equal bustle on the other ships. Trav- 
eling before a favoring breeze in the same direc- 

198 



BLUBBER AND SONG 199 

tion as the whales, the three vessels waited until 
they could work closer. Each captain in the 
meanwhile kept a watchful eye on the others. 
None of them proposed to let his rivals get the 
start. The Reindeer was to windward of us, 
the Helen Marr on our lee. 

When the ships had reached within a mile of 
the whales Captain Shorey sent our boats down. 
Instantly the other skippers did the same. Soon 
thirteen whale boats were speeding on the chase. 

Fine sailing weather it was, with a fresh breeze 
ruffling the surface of a gently heaving sea. 
With all sails set and keeping well apart, the 
boats heeled over, their crews sitting lined up 
along the weather gunwales. There seemed no 
chance of any clash or misunderstanding. There 
were plenty of whales, and with any luck there 
would be glory enough and profit enough for all. 

Like a line of skirmishers deployed against an 
enemy, the boats stole silently toward the whales. 
We soon saw the great animals were busy feed- 
ing. A few inches below the surface the sea 
was filled with " whale food," a round, diapha- 
nous, disk-like jellyfish about the size of a silver 



200 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

dollar and perfectly white. When he arrived in 
this Arctic Ocean whale pasture the water 
seemed snowy with the millions of jellyfish. 
With open jaws, the whales swam this way and 
that, making zigzag swaths a hundred yards long 
through the gelatinous masses, their great heads 
and backs well out of water, their fins now and 
then flapping ponderously. When they had en- 
tangled a sufficient quantity of the jellyfish in 
the long hair hanging from the inner edges 
of their teeth they closed their mouths with re- 
verberating snaps that sent the water splashing 
out on either side. 

Before the whales were aware of danger, the 
boats rushed in among them. Each boatheader 
singled out a whale, and five boats were quickly 
fast — two from the Reindeer, two from the 
Helen Marr, and Mr. Winchester's boat. Wild 
turmoil and confusion instantly ensued among 
the great animals. They went plunging below 
in alarm and the boats that made no strike at 
the first onslaught had no chance thereafter. The 
whales did not stop to investigate the causes of 
the sudden interruption of their banquet. The 



BLUBBER AND SONG 201 

sea swallowed them up and we did not see them 
again. A little later we caught a glimpse of 
their fountains twinkling against the sky on the 
far horizon. 

Mr. Winchester's whale was wriggling about 
among the jellyfish with jaws widely distended 
when the boat slipped silently upon it. As the 
prow bumped against its black skin, Long John 
drove a harpoon up to the hitches in its back. 
With a tonite bomb shattered in its vitals, the 
monster sounded in a smother of foam. In the 
dynamic violence with which it got under way 
it literally stood on its head. Its flukes, easily 
twenty feet from tip to tip, shot at least thirty 
feet into the air. They swung over to one side, 
the great body forming a high arch, and struck 
the sea with a resounding smack. Then they 
sailed on high again to come down on the other 
side with another broadside smash. Again they 
rose like lightning into the air and the whale 
seemed to slip down perpendicularly into the 
ocean. 

It was evident at the outset that the animal 
was badly wounded. It swam only a short dis- 



202 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

tance below the surface and not rapidly, send- 
ing up thousands of bubbles to mark its course. 
This broad highway of bubbles curved and 
turned, but Mr. Winchester, who had been smart 
enough not to lower his sail, followed it as a 
hound follows the trail of a deer. The boat 
sailed almost as swiftly as the whale swam and 
was able to keep almost directly above it. When 
the whale came to the surface the mate was upon 
it and Long John's second harpoon stopped it 
dead in its track. The whale went through no 
flurry, but died instantly and rolled over on its 
back. 

With excitement all about, there was nothing 
for Mr. Landers or Gabriel to do. So we sat 
still in the boats and watched the swift incidents 
of the far-flung battle. 

One of the whales struck by a boat from the 
Reindeer breached almost completely out of 
water as soon as it felt the sting of the harpoon. 
It floundered down like a falling tower, rolled 
about for a moment before sinking to a swim- 
ming depth, and made off at mad speed. It 
rose within twenty feet of where our boat lay 



BLUBBER AND SONG 203 

at a standstill and we could see its wild eye, as 
big as a saucer, as the injured creature blew up 
a fountain whose bloody spray fell all over us. 
The boat it was dragging soon went flashing past 
us, the crew sitting crouched down and silent. 

" Swing to him, fellers," shouted Kaiuli, 
standing up and waving his hat about his head. 

But the others paid no attention to our South 
Sea island savage. They were intent just then 
on tragedy. Their boat struck the whale at its 
next rise. The animal went into a violent flurry. 
It beat the sea into a lather with fins and flukes 
and darted around on its side in a semi-circle, 
clashing its great jaws, until it finally collapsed 
and lay limp and lifeless. 

The whale struck by the other boat from the 
Reindeer ran out a tub of line, but a second boat 
had come up in time to bend on its own line 
and took the animal in tow. Before the whale 
had run out this new tub, a third boat harpooned 
it. With two boats fast to it, it continued its 
flight to windward and was at least two miles 
from us when its pursuers at last overtook and 
killed it. 



204 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

Two boats from the Helen Marr struck 
whales while the monsters were feeding within 
an oar's length of each other. One whale started 
off at right angles to the direction taken by the 
other. It looked for a time as if the two lines 
would become entangled and the boats would 
crash together. But the whale that cut across 
the other's course swam above the latter's line 
and dragged its boat so swiftly after it that a 
collision was averted by a few feet. 

One of the whales was bombed and killed after 
a short flight. The other acted in a way that 
whales hardly ever act. It ran hard to wind- 
ward at first, as whales usually do when struck. 
Then it suddenly turned and ran in an exactly 
opposite direction. This unexpected change in 
its course almost upset the boat, which was 
jerked violently over on its beam-ends and spun 
round like a top, while the crew held on for dear 
life and barely escaped being pitched into the 
sea. Once righted and on its way again, the 
boat rapidly hauled up on the whale, whose fast- 
going vitality showed in its diminished speed. 
After a flight that had covered at least a mile, 



BLUBBER AND SONG 205 

the whale was finally killed close to the spot at 
which it had first been struck. 

When the sharp, fast work of the boats ended, 
five mighty carcasses lay stretched upon the sea. 
The great whale drive, which had lasted less 
than an hour, had bagged game worth something 
like $60,000. 

The three ships soon sailed to close quarters 
and the boats had a comparatively easy time get- 
ting the whales alongside. That night the try- 
works were started and big cressets whose flames 
were fed by " scrap " flared up on all the ships, 
lighting them in ghostly-wise from the deck to 
the topmost sail. 

At the cutting in of this whale I had my first 
experience at the windlass. The heaviest labor 
falls to the sailors who man the windlass and 
hoist in the great blanket pieces of blubber and 
the " old head." Gabriel, the happiest-spirited 
old soul aboard, bossed the job, as he always did, 
and cheered the sailors and made the hard work 
seem like play by his constant chanteys — those 
catchy, tuneful, working songs of the sea. All 
the old sailors on the brig knew these songs by 



206 A YEAH WITH A WHALER 

heart and often sang them on the topsail halyard 
or while reefing on the topsail yard. The green 
hands soon picked up the words and airs of the 
choruses and joined in. The day laborer on land 
has no idea how work at sea is lightened by these 
songs. 

Gabriel knew no end of them, and in a round, 
musical voice led the men at the windlass in such 
rollicking old-time sea airs as " Whiskey for the 
Johnnies," "Blow the Man Down," "Blow, 
Boys, Blow," and " Rolling Rio." He would 
sing a verse and the sailors would stand with 
their hands on the windlass bars until he had 
concluded. Then they would heave away with 
a will and make the pawls clank and clatter as 
they roared out the chorus. The old negro's 
favorite was " Whiskey for the Johnnies." It 
had a fine rousing chorus and we liked to sing it 
not only for its stirring melody but because we 
always harbored a hope — which, I may add, was 
never realized — that the captain would be 
touched by the words and send forward a drop 
of liquor with which to wet our whistles. Ga- 
briel would begin in this way: 



BLUBBER AND SONG 207 

" O whiskey is the life of man." 

And the sailors as they heaved would chorus: 

" O whiskey, O Johnny. 

whiskey is the life of man, 
Whiskey for the Johnnies." 

Then Gabriel would sing: 

" Whiskey killed my poor old dad, 
Whiskey drove my mother mad, 
Whiskey caused me much abuse, 
Whiskey put me in the calaboose, 
Whiskey fills a man with care, 
Whiskey makes a man a bear." 

And the men would come through with the 
refrain : 

"Whiskey, Johnny. 

1 drink whiskey when I can. 
O whiskey for the Johnnies." 

At the end of our song which ran through 
verses enough to bring a blanket piece of blub- 
ber swinging inboard, we would look wistfully 
toward the quarter-deck and wonder if the " old 
man " would take our musical hint. 

Or Gabriel would start up " Rolling Rio ": 
" I'll sing you a song of the fish of the sea." 

The men would thunder: 
" Rolling Rio." 

Gabriel would continue: 

"As I was going down Broadway Street 



20$ A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

A pretty young girl I chanced to meet." 

And the sailors would sing: 

" To my rolling Rio Grande. 
Hurrah, you Rio, rolling Rio. 
So fare you well, my pretty young girl, 
I'm bound for the Rio Grande." 

" Blow, Boys, Blow " was another with which 
we made the Arctic ring. The other ships could 
not have failed to hear its swinging rhythm as it 
burst from our lusty lungs in this fashion: 

Gabriel : 

" A Yankee ship came down the river." 

The sailors: 

" Blow, boys, blow." 

Gabriel : 

"And who do you think was skipper of her?. 
Dandy Jim of old Carolina." 

Sailors: 

" Blow, my bully boys, blow." 
Qabriel : 

"And who do you think was second greaser? 
Why, Pompey Squash, that big buck nigger." 

Sailors: 

" Blow, boys, blow." 

Gabriel : 

'And what do you think they had for dinner? 
Monkey lights and donkey's liver." 



BLUBBER AND SONG 209 

Sailors : 

" Blow, my bully boys, blow." 

Gabriel : 

" And what do you think they had for supper? 
Old hard tack and Yankee leather. 
Then blow, my boys, for better weather. 
Blow, my boys, I love to hear you." 

Sailors : 

" Blow, my bully boys, blow." 
So with a heave and a song we soon had our 
whale stowed, bone and blubber, below hatches. 
The Reindeer and the Helen Marr had drifted 
far away from us by the time our work was 
finished, but they were still in sight and their try- 
t works smoking. Our whale yielded 1,800 pounds 
of bone. 



mtm—m—mm—mmmmmmmmm rw ■ " ■ 



CHAPTER XIX 



A NARROW PINCH 



THE whaling fleet divided soon after enter- 
ing the Arctic Ocean. Some of the ships 
went straight on north to the whaling 
grounds about Point Barrow and Herschel Is- 
land. The others bore to the westward for the 
whaling along the ice north of eastern Siberia. 
We stood to the westward. In a few days we 
had raised the white coasts of a continent of ice 
that shut in all the north as far as the eye could 
see and extended to the Pole and far beyond. 
With the winds in the autumn always blowing 
from the northwest, the sea was perfectly calm 
in the lee of this indestructible polar cap. I 
have been out in the whale boats when they 
were heeled over on their beam-ends under 
double-reefed sails before a gale of wind upon 
a sea as smooth as the waters of a duck pond. 



210 



A NARROW PINCH 211 

It was now no longer bright twilight at mid- 
night. The sun already well on its journey to 
the equator, sank earlier and deeper below the 
horizon. Several hours of darkness began to 
intervene between its setting and its rising. By 
September we had a regular succession of days 
and nights. 

With the return of night we saw for the first 
time that electric phenomenon of the Far North, 
the aurora borealis. Every night during our 
stay in the Arctic the skies were made brilliant 
with these shooting lights. I had expected to 
see waving curtains of rainbow colors, but I saw 
no colors at any time. The auroras of those 
skies were of pure white light. A great arch 
would suddenly shoot across the zenith from 
horizon to horizon. It was nebulously bright, 
like a shining milky way or a path of snow upon 
which moonlight sparkles. You could hear it 
rustle and crackle distinctly, with a sound like 
that of heavy silk violently shaken. It shed a 
cold white radiance over the sea like the light of 
arc lamps, much brighter than the strongest 
moonlight. 



WMlw^wlMMO 



mmmmmmm* 



212 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

It was not quite bright enough to read by — 
but almost — and it threw sharp, black shadows 
on the deck. Gradually the arch would fade, to 
be succeeded by others that spanned the heavens 
from other angles. Often several arches and 
segments were in the sky at the same time. 
Sometimes, though rarely, the aurora assumed 
the form of a curtain hanging vertically along 
the horizon and shimmered as though agitated 
by a strong wind. 

I was pleasantly surprised by the tempera- 
tures encountered in the Arctic. We were in 
the polar ocean until early in October, but the 
lowest temperature recorded by the brig's ther- 
mometer was 10 degrees below zero. Such a 
temperature seems colder on sea than on land. 
Greater dampness has something to do with it, 
but imagination probably plays its part. There 
is something in the very look of a winter sea, 
yeasty under the north wind and rilled with 
snowy floes and icebergs, that seems to congeal 
the marrow in one's bones. In the cold snaps, 
when a big wave curled over the bows, I have 
seen it break and strike upon the deck in the 



A NARROW PINCH 213 

form of hundreds of ice pellets. Almost every 
day when it was rough, the old Arctic played 
marbles with us. 

What with the mists, the cold rains, the sleets 
and snows and flying spray, the brig was soon 
a mass of ice. The sides became encased in a 
white armor of ice which at the bows was sev- 
eral feet thick. We frequently had to knock it 
off. The decks were sheeted with ice, the masts 
and spars were glazed with it, the shrouds, 
stays, and every rope were coated with ice, and 
the yard-arms and foot-ropes were hung with ice 
stalactites. One of the most beautiful sights I 
ever saw was the whaling fleet when we fell in 
with it one cold, gray morning. The frost had 
laid its white witchery upon the other ships as 
it had upon the brig, and they glided through 
the black seas, pallid, shimmering, and phantom- 
like in their ice armor — an armada of ghostly 
Flying Dutchmen. 

The brig was constantly wearing and tacking 
on the whaling grounds and there was consider- 
able work to be done aloft. By the captain's 
orders, we did such work with our mittens off. 



214 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

Hauling bare-handed on ropes of solid ice was 
painful labor, and " Belay all! " often came like 
a benediction to souls in torment. Then we had 
much ado whipping our hands against our sides 
to restore the circulation. After Big Foot Louis 
had frozen a finger, the captain permitted us to 
keep our mittens on. 

Work aloft under such conditions was dan- 
gerous. Our walrus-hide boots were heelless 
and extremely slippery and our footing on the 
foot-ropes was precarious. We had to depend 
as much upon our hands as upon our feet to 
keep from falling when strung out for reefing 
along the topsail yard. Many were the slips 
and hair-breadth escapes. It seems now, on 
looking back on it, almost miraculous that some 
of us green hands did not tumble to our death. 

We saw whales frequently. Sometimes the 
boats were lowered half a dozen times a day. 
Often we spent whole days in the boats, and 
even in our skin clothes it was freezing business 
sitting still on the gunwale of a beam-ended boat 
driving along at thrilling speed in the teeth of 
an Arctic gale. Our skipper was a good gam- 



A NARROW PINCH 215 

bier, and he lowered whenever there was an off 
chance to bag a leviathan. 

As we worked to the westward, twin peaks 
rose out of the sea ahead of us. Covered with 
snow and ice, they stood out against the sky as 
white as marble. It was our first glimpse of 
Herald Island, in latitude 71 degrees north. We 
sailed north of the island and close to it. It 
looked forbiddingly desolate. Along the shores 
there was a rampart of black rock. Nowhere 
else was a glimpse of earth or herbage of any 
sort. The island was a gleaming white mass of 
snow and ice from the dark sea to the tips of the 
twin mountains. It was discovered in 1849 by 
Captain Kellett of the English ship Herald and 
named after his vessel. Captain De Long, 
leader of the ill-fated Jeanette expedition, was 
frozen in close to the island in the winter of 
1880. He found polar bear plentiful and 
trapped and shot a number. 

Here at Herald Island we fell in with eight- 
een ships of the whaling fleet — all that had 
cruised to the westward — and it was only by 
good luck that some of them did not leave their 



216 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

hulks on those desolate shores. The polar pack 
rested solidly against the island's western end 
and curved in a great half -moon to the north 
and east. The pocket thus formed between the 
island and the ice looked good for whales and 
the ships hunted it out carefully. 

Far to the eastward, a long arm of ice reached 
out from the pack and grasped the island's east- 
ern end. This arm was perhaps a mile wide. 
It barred our passage back to the open sea. The 
ships had been caught in a trap. They were 
bottled up in a hole of water perhaps a hundred 
square miles in extent. Busy on the lookout for 
whales, the captains of the fleet did not realize 
the situation for several hours. When they dis- 
covered their predicament, they hurried to the 
crow's-nests with glasses to try to spy out an 
avenue of escape. Sail was cracked on. The 
ships began to fly about like panic-stricken living 
creatures. 

The great polar pack was pressing rapidly 
toward the island. Unless the ships escaped, it 
seemed likely they would be securely hemmed in 
before night. In this event, if they escaped 



A NARROW PINCH 217 

wreck by ice pressure they faced the prospect of 
lying still in an ice bed until the pack broke up 
in the spring. 

All day long the frightened ships scurried up 
and down the ice barrier without finding an 
opening. They ran to the westward. There 
was no escape there. They flew back to the 
east. An ice wall confronted them. The case 
seemed hopeless. The panic of the captains be- 
came more and more evident. If a ship hurried 
off in any direction, the other ships flocked after 
her like so many scared sheep. Morning and 
afternoon passed in this wild search for an out- 
let. Night was coming on. 

A bark squared her yards and shot away to 
the southeast. It was the Sea Breeze. When 
the others expected her to tack, she did no such 
thing, but kept going straight ahead. On she 
went alone, far from the fleet. It was exciting 
to watch that single ship flying eastward. What 
could it mean? Had she found an opening? 
The other ships turned their prows after her, 
one by one. A long line of vessels soon was 
careering in the wake of the Sea Breeze. She 



218 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

had dwindled to a little ship in the far distance 
when at last we saw her break out the American 
colors at her mizzen peak. Every man aboard 
the brig gave a cheer. Cheers from the other 
ships came across the water. It meant that the 
Sea Breeze was clear. 

She had found a lead that suddenly had 
opened through the eastern ice strip, as leads 
will open in drifting floes. The lead was no? 
entirely clear. A narrow strip of ice lay across 
it. The Sea Breeze butted through this strip 
and sailed on to freedom. The other vessels fol- 
lowed. Our brig was the tenth ship to pass 
through. As we negotiated the narrow passage, 
the ice was so close on both sides we could have 
leaped upon it from the bulwarks. It was with 
a joyous sense of escape that we cleared the pack 
and swung once more on the open sea. Soon 
after the last ship of the fleet had bumped her 
way to safety the ice closed solidly behind. 



CHAPTER XX 

A RACE AND A RACE HORSE 

EARLY one morning the old familiar cry- 
rang from the crow's-nest — " Blo-o-o-w." 
A lone whale, in plain view from the deck, 
was sporting lazily on the surface about a mile 
and a half off our starboard bow. The three 
boats were hurriedly lowered and the crews 
scrambled in. We took to the oars, for not a 
breath of air was stirring and the sea was as 
smooth as polished silver. Away went the boats 
together, as if from a starting line at the crack 
of a pistol, with the whale as the goal and prize 
of the race. 

Mr. Winchester had often boasted of the su- 
periority of his crew. Mr. Landers had not 
seemed interested in the question, but Gabriel 
resented the assumption. " Just wait," he used 
to say to us confidentially. " We'll show him 

svhich is de bes' crew. Our time'll come." The 

219 



220 A YEAR WITH: A WHALER 

men of the mate's boat had shared their officer's 
vainglorious opinion. They had long swaggered 
among us with a self-complacent assurance that 
made us smart. Our chance had at last come 
to prove their pride a mockery under the skip- 
per's eyes. If ever men wanted, from the bot- 
tom of their hearts, to win, we did. We not only 
had our name as skillful oarsmen to vindicate, 
but a grudge to wipe out. 

So evenly matched were the crews that the 
boats rushed along side by side for at least half 
a mile, Mr. Winchester insouciant and super- 
ciliously smiling, Mr. Landers indifferent, Ga- 
briel all eagerness and excitement. Perhaps 
Mr. Landers knew his crew was outclassed. If 
he did not, he was not long in finding it out, 
for his boat began to drop steadily behind and 
was soon hopelessly out of the contest. But the 
other two crews, stroke for stroke, were proving 
foemen worthy of each other's prowess. 

" Oho, Gabriel," Mr. Winchester laughed 
contemptuously, " you think your boat can out- 
pull us, eh? Bet you ten pounds of tobacco 
we beat you to the whale." 



RACE AND RACE HORSE 221 

" I take you," cried Gabriel excitedly. " Dat's 
a bet." 

If Gabriel accepted the challenge, so did we, 
and right heartily at that. We threw ourselves, 
heart and soul, into the struggle. The men in 
the mate's boat, holding us cheaply, believed they 
could draw away whenever they chose and go 
on to win, hands down. The mate kept looking 
over at us, a supercilious smile still curling the 
corners of his mouth. 

" Come on now, my boys," he cried. " All to- 
gether. Shake her up a bit. Give those fellows 
a taste of your mettle." 

We heard his words as distinctly as his own 
crew heard them — he was only a few boat 
lengths away. They inspired us to greater 
exertion than they inspired his own men. They 
spurted. So did we. Still the two boats raced 
neck and neck. We were not to be shaken off. 
The mate looked disconcerted. His men had 
done their level best to take the lead and they 
had failed. That spurt marked the crisis of the 
race. 

The mate's smile faded out. His face grew 



222 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

anxious. Then it hardened into an expression 
of grim determination. He had sat motionless 
at the beginning. Now when he saw his vaunted 
superiority slipping through his fingers he began 
to " jockey " — throwing his body forward in vio- 
lent lunges at every stroke of the sweeps, push- 
ing with all his might on the stroke oar, and 
booming out, "Pull, my boys; pull away, my 
boys." 

But old Gabriel was " jockeying," too, and 
encouraging us in the same fashion. 

" We show dat mate," he kept repeating. 
" We show him. Steady together, my lads. 
Pull away!" 

And we pulled as if our lives depended on it, 
bending to the oars with every ounce of our 
strength, making the long sweeps bend in the 
water. We began to forge ahead, very slowly, 
inch by inch. We saw it — it cheered us to 
stronger effort. Our rivals saw it — it discour- 
aged them. Under the heart-breaking strain 
they began to tire. They slipped back little by 
little. They spurted again. It was no use. We 
increased our advantage. Open daylight began 



RACE AND RACE HORSE 223 

lo broaden between the stern of our boat and the 
bow of theirs. They were beaten in a fair trial 
of strength, oarsmanship, and endurance. 

" Ha, my boys," chuckled Gabriel. " We win. 
Good-by to dat mate. Now we catch dat whale." 

We shot along at undiminished speed, pulling 
exultantly. What the whale was doing or how 
close we were to it, we at the oars could not 
see. 

" Stand by, Louis," said Gabriel presently. 

" Aye, aye, sir," responded Louis. 

A few more strokes and a great black bulk 
loomed close alongside. 

" Give it to him, Louis," cried Gabriel. 

And as the boat glanced against that island 
of living ebony, Louis's harpoon sank deep into 
the soft, buttery mass. We heard the tiny con- 
cussion of the cap of the tonite gun, and a frac- 
tion of a second later the bomb exploded with 
a muffled roar in the whale's vitals. 

" Stern, stern!" shouted Gabriel. " Stern for 
your lives ! " 

We backed water as hard as we could. The 
great back went flashing down, the mighty tail 



224 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

rose up directly over us, shutting out the sky. 
It curled over away from us and smote the sea 
with deafening thunder. As quick as hghtning 
it rose into the air again, curled high above us 
with tragic menace, and came crashing down, 
this time toward us. But we had backed just out 
of harm's way. Death and that terrible tail 
missed us by about three feet. 

The mate's boat came rushing up. It was too 
late. The whale — our whale — had sounded. 

" Your boat can beat us, eh? " Gabriel called 
tauntingly to Mr. Winchester. " Not much. I 
know we break blackskin first. I know we win 
dat race." 

Our line began to dance and sing, leaping up 
from its neatly laid coils in the tub in dizzy 
spirals and humming out over the bow. 

" Ha, boys," sang out Kaiuli, our Kanaka 
bow oarsman. " Now for fine ride behind Arc- 
tic race horse — eh? " 

With a whale harnessed to our boat and a sea 
as smooth as any turnpike for our highway, we 
settled ourselves for the ride. The friction of 
the line set the boat going. It gathered momen- 



RACE AND RACE HORSE 225 

turn. In a little while we were tearing along 
through that sea of oil, our bow deep in the 
smother as the whale pulled down upon it, and 
flashing walls of white spray flaring out on 
either side. 

The other boats pulled for the point at which 
it seemed most probable the whale would come 
up. When it rose to the surface, the mate's boat 
was nearest. 

" Lay me on four seas off and I'll get him," 
we heard Long John shout to Mr. Winchester. 
The mate did just that. The whale was up but 
a moment and Long John tried for it, but it was 
too long a dart, and his harpoon fell into the sea. 
Before he had recovered his iron we had shot 
past. When the whale rose again, we bumped 
out of water on its body. A second harpoon 
drove home in its back, a second bomb exploded 
in its insides. A great shudder seized the mon- 
ster. The water foamed white with its throes. 
Then everything grew still. Slowly the great 
body rolled over, belly up. 

Big Foot Louis danced up and down in the 
bow, raising his knees high in a sort of joyful 



226 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

cake-walk. Gabriel, equally excited, waved his 
hat. 

" By golly," he shouted, " dat mate don't 
strike him. Dat feesh is all ours. It takes old 
Gabriel fer kill de whale, by golly." 

When we got back to the brig we looked like 
snow-powdered Santa Clauses. The spray 
kicked up in our wild ride behind the Arctic 
Ocean race horse had wet us from head to foot 
and, freezing on our fur clothes, had frosted 
us all over with fine white ice. Mr. Winchester 
was a good sportsman and paid his bet promptly. 
Out of his winnings Gabriel gave each man of his 
boat's crew a plug of tobacco. 

After the whale had been brought alongside 
the ship and the blubber had been peeled off its 
body, it fell to the lot of Big Foot Louis to cut 
in the " old head." It was his first opportunity 
to show his experience in such work and he was 
as elated as a boy. He threw off his coat with 
a theatrical flourish, hitched up his trousers, 
seized an axe, and with an air of bravado climbed 
down on the stripped carcass. A little sea had 
begun to run and the whale was bending sinu- 



RACE AND RACE HORSE 227 

ously throughout its length and rolling slightly 
from side to side. 

Louis chopped two little ledges in the whale's 
flesh with the deftness of an old hand, and plant- 
ing his feet in these, began raining blows with 
his axe on the neck. He was getting on fa- 
mously, and the crew, hanging over the bul- 
warks, was watching with admiring eyes. Sud- 
denly the whale gave an unexpectedly violent 
roll — our Arctic Ocean race horse was proving 
a bronco even in death — and Louis's big foot 
slipped off into the water. He lost his balance, 
pitched forward, and sprawled face downward 
on the whale, his axe sailing away and plunking 
into the sea. He clutched frantically at the 
whale, but every grip slipped loose and, inch by 
inch, with eyeballs popping out of his head, he 
slid off into the sea and with a yell went under. 

Everybody laughed. The captain held his 
sides and the officers on the cutting stage almost 
fell off in the violence of their mirth. Louis 
came up spluttering and splashing. He was an 
expert swimmer, as expert as the Kanakas 
among whom he had lived for years, and he 



228 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

needed all his skill to keep afloat in his heavy 
boots and skin clothes. As soon as the mate 
could control his merriment, he stuck the long 
handle of his spade down and Louis grasped it 
and was pulled back on the whale's body. He 
sat there, dripping and shivering and with chat- 
tering teeth, rolling his white eyes up at the 
laughing crew along the rail with a tragic " Et 
tu, Brute " expression. He couldn't see the 
joke. 

" Lemme aboard," he whimpered. 

" Stay where you are," roared the captain, 
" and cut in that head." 

Louis lived in mortal fear of the skipper, and 
the way he straightened up in his slippery seat 
and said " Aye, aye, sir! " made the crew burst 
out laughing again. Another axe was passed 
down to him. He floundered to his feet, and 
though he found it harder than ever in his wet 
boots to keep his footing, and slipped more than 
once and almost fell off again, he finally suc- 
ceeded in cutting off the head. He had regained 
his air of bravado by the time he had scrambled 
back on deck. 



RACE AND RACE HORSE 229 

"Pretty close shave, Louis," ventured a sailor. 

" Humph," returned Louis, " dat's nothin' — 
nothin' at all." And with quite lordly dignity, 
despite the dripping brine, he stalked off to the 
cabin to change his clothes. 



CHAPTER XXI 



BEARS FOR A CHANGE 



OON after taking our third whale, we saw 
our first polar bears — two of them on a 
narrow floe of ice. When the brig was 
within fifty yards of them the mate got out his 
rifle and began blazing away. His first shot 
struck one of the bears in the hind leg. The 
animal wheeled and snapped at the wound. 
The second shot stretched it out dead. The 
second bear was hit somewhere in the body and, 
plunging into the sea, it struck out on a three- 
mile swim for the main ice pack. It swam with 
head and shoulders out, cleaving the water like 
a high-power launch and leaving a creaming 
wake behind. Moving so swiftly across the 
brig's course, it made a difficult target. 

" I'm going down after that fellow," said Mr. 

Winchester. 

230 



BEARS FOB A CHANGE 231 

He called a boat's crew and lowered, taking 
his place in the bow with his rifle, while Long 
John sat at the tiller. He had got only a short 
distance from the ship when Captain Shorey 
ordered Gabriel after him. 

" Killing that bear may be a bigger job than 
he thinks," he said. " Lower a boat, Mr. Ga- 
briel, and lend a hand. It may be needed." 

In a few minutes Gabriel was heading after 
the mate's boat. Neither boat hoisted sail. With 
four men at the sweeps, it was as much as the 
boats could do to gain on the brute. If the bear 
was not making fifteen miles an hour, I'm no 
judge. 

Mr. Winchester kept pegging away, his bul- 
lets knocking up water all around the animal. 
One ball struck the bear in the back. That de- 
cided the animal to change its tactics. It quit 
running away and turned and made directly for 
its enemies. 

" Avast rowing," sang out the mate. 

The men peaked their bars, turned on the 
thwarts, and had their first chance to watch de- 
velopments, which came thick and fast. Rabid 



232 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

ferocity, blind fury, and deadly menace were in 
every line of that big white head shooting across 
the water toward them. The boat sat stationary 
on a dancing sea. The mate's rifle cracked re- 
peatedly. The bullets peppered the sea, sending 
up little spurts of water all about the bear. But 
the beast did not notice them, never tried to 
dodge, never swerved aside — just kept rushing 
for the boat with the directness of an arrow. 

It was a time of keen excitement for the men 
in the boat. They kept glancing with an " Oh, 
that Bliicher or night would come " expression 
toward Gabriel's boat, which was doing all that 
oars could do to get into the fray, Big Foot 
Louis standing all the while in the bow with 
harpoon ready. The bobbing of his boat dis- 
concerted the mate's aim. Though he was a 
crack shot, as he had often proved among the 
okchugs, I never saw him shoot so badly. But 
he kept banging away, and when the bear was 
within fifteen or twenty yards he got home a 
ball in its shoulder. The beast plunged into the 
air, snarling and clawing at the sea, then rushed 
again for the boat like a white streak. It 



BEARS FOR A CHANGE 233 

rammed into the boat bows-on, stuck one mighty 
paw over the gunwale, and with a snarling roar 
and a frothing snap of glistening fangs, leaped 
up and tried to climb aboard. 

Just at this critical instant Gabriel's boat 
came into action with a port helm. Louis drove 
a harpoon into the beast behind the shoulder — 
drove it up to the haft, so that the spear-head 
burst out on the other side. At the same mo- 
ment the mate stuck the muzzle of his rifle almost 
down the bear's throat and fired. The great 
brute fell back into the water, clawed and 
plunged and roared and clashed its teeth and 
so, in a whirlwind of impotent fury, died. 

For a moment it lay limp and still among the 
lapping waves, then slowly began to sink. But 
Louis held it up with the harpoon line and the 
animal was towed back to the brig. It measured 
over seven feet in length and weighed 1,700 
pounds — a powerful, gaunt old giant, every inch 
bone and sinew. Mr. Winchester retrieved the 
other bear from the ice floe. It was consider- 
ably smaller. The pelts were stripped off and 
the carcasses thrown overboard. The skins were 



234 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

in good condition, despite the earliness of the 
season. They were stretched on frames fash- 
ioned by the cooper, and tanned. 

A week or so later we sighted a lone bear on 
an ice floe making a meal off a seal it had killed. 
It was late in the afternoon and one had to look 
twice before being able to make out its white 
body against the background of snow-covered 
ice. When the brig sailed within seventy-five 
yards the bear raised its head for a moment, took 
a squint at the vessel, didn't seem interested, and 
went on eating. 

Resting his rifle on the bulwarks and taking 
careful aim, Mr. Winchester opened fire. The 
pattering of the bullets on the ice seemed to 
puzzle the bear. As it heard the missiles sing 
and saw the snow spurt up, it left the seal and 
began walking all about the floe on an investi- 
gation. Finally it reared on its hind legs to its 
full height. While in this upright position, a 
bullet struck it and turned it a sudden twisting 
somersault. Its placid mood was instantly. suc- 
ceeded by one of ferocious anger. It looked 
toward the vessel and roared savagely. Still the 



BEARS FOR A CHANGE 235 

bullets fell about it, and now alive to its danger, 
it plunged into the sea and struck out for the 
polar pack a mile distant. 

Mr. Winchester again lowered, with Gabriel's 
boat to back him up. The chase was short and 
swift. The boats began to overhaul the bear as 
it approached the ice, the mate's bullets splash- 
ing all about the animal, but doing no damage. 
As the brute was hauling itself upon the ice, a 
ball crashed into its back, breaking its spine. It 
fell back into the water and expired in a furious 
flurry. A running bowline having been slipped 
over its neck, it was towed back to the brig. 

Not long afterward, while we were cruising in 
open water, a polar bear swam across the brig's 
stern. There was neither ice nor land in sight. 
Figuring the ship's deck as the center of a circle 
of vision about ten miles in diameter, the bear 
already had swum five miles, and probably quite 
a bit more, and it is certain he had an equal 
distance to go before finding any ice on which 
to rest. It probably had drifted south on an ice 
pan and was bound back for its home on the 
polar pack. 



236 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

The bear made too tempting a target for the 
mate to resist, and he brought out his rifle and, 
kneeling on the quarter-deck, he took steady aim 
and fired. His bullet struck about two feet be- 
hind the animal. He aimed again, but changed 
his mind and lowered his gun. 

" No," he said, " that fellow's making too fine 
a swim. I'll let him go." 

Cleaving the water with a powerful stroke, 
the bear went streaking out of sight over the 
horizon. It is safe to say that before its swim 
ended the animal covered fifteen miles at the 
lowest estimate, and possibly a much greater 
distance. 

One moonlight night a little later, while we 
were traveling under short sail with considerable 
ice about, a whale blew a short distance to wind- 
ward. I was at the wheel and Mr. Landers was 
standing near me. " Blow! " breathed Mr. Lan- 
ders softly. Suddenly the whale breached — we 
could hear it distinctly as it shot up from a 
narrow channel between ice floes. " There she 
breaches!" said Mr. Landers in the same low 
voice, with no particular concern. We thought 



BEARS FOR A CHANGE 237 

the big creature merely was enjoying a moon- 
light frolic. It breached again. This time its 
body crashed upon a strip of ice and flopped 
and floundered for a moment before sliding back 
into the water. Then it breached half a dozen 
times more in rapid succession. I had never 
seen a whale breach more than once at a time, 
even when wounded. Mr. Landers became in- 
terested. " I wonder what's the matter with 
that whale," he said. 

To our surprise, two other black bodies began 
to flash up into the moonlight about the whale. 
Every time the whale breached, they breached, 
too. They were of huge size, but nothing like 
so large as the whale. 

" Killers ! " cried Mr. Landers excitedly. 

Then we knew the whale was not playing, but 
fighting for its life. It leaped above the sur- 
face to a lesser and lesser height each time. 
Plainly it was tiring fast. When it breached 
the last time only its head and a small portion 
of its body rose into the air and both killers 
seemed to be hanging with a bulldog grip upon 
its lower jaw. What the outcome of that des- 



238 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

perate battle was we did not see. The whale 
and its savage assailants moved off out of eye- 
shot. But for some time after we had lost sight 
of the whale we could hear its labored and ster- 
toreous breathing and its heavy splashes as it 
attempted to breach. 

Killers, Mr. Landers told me, are themselves 
a species of rapacious, carnivorous whale, whose 
upper and lower jaws are armed with sharp, 
saw-like teeth. They are otherwise known as the 
Orca gladiator, and tiger-hearted gladiators of 
the sea they are. The great, clumsy bowhead 
with no teeth with which to defend itself, whose 
only weapons are its flukes and its fins, is no 
match for them. They attack the great creature 
whenever they encounter it, and when it has 
exhausted itself in its efforts to escape, they 
tear open its jaws and feast upon its tongue. 
The killer whale never hunts alone. It pursues 
its titanic quarry in couples and trios, and some- 
times in veritable wolf-like packs of half a dozen. 
There is usually no hope for the bowhead that 
these relentless creatures mark for their prey. 



CHAPTER XXII 



THE STKANDED WHALE 



OUR fourth and last whale gave us quite a 
bit of trouble. We sighted this fellow 
spouting in a choppy sea among ice is- 
lands two or three miles off the edges of the 
polar pack. All three boats lowered for it. It 
was traveling slowly in the same direction the 
brig was sailing and about two miles from the 
vessel. It took the boats some time to work to 
close quarters. When the mate's boat was al- 
most within striking distance, the whale went 
under. As frightened whales usually run 
against the wind, Mr. Winchester steered to 
windward. But the whale had not been fright- 
ened; it had not seen the boats. Consequently 
it failed to head into the wind, but did the un- 
expected by coming up to leeward, blowing with 

evident unconcern. This brought it nearest td 

239 



240 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

Gabriel, who went after it in a flash. After a 
sharp, swift run down the wind, we struck the 
whale, which dived and went racing under water 
for the ice pack. The dizzy rate at which it 
took out our line might have led us to believe 
it was not hurt, but we knew it was seriously 
wounded by the fountains of blood it sent up 
whenever it came to the surface. 

The captain's signals from the brig, by this 
time, had headed the other boats in our direc- 
tion, but they could not reach us in time to be 
of any assistance. The whale ran away with 
our tub of line and we sat still and watched the 
red fountains that marked its course as it headed 
for the big ice to the north. 

Directly in the whale's course lay an ice floe 
about half a mile long, a few hundred yards wide 
and rising from five to ten feet above the surface. 
We naturally supposed the creature would dive 
under this and keep going for the main pack. 
To our surprise we soon saw fountain after foun- 
tain, red with blood, shooting up from the cen- 
ter of the floe. The whale evidently was too 
badly injured to continue its flight and had 










m 



o 

w 

a 



THE STRANDED WHALE 241 

sought refuge beneath this strip of drifting ice. 

Men were hurriedly landed from all the boats 
with harpoons and shoulder guns, leaving enough 
sailors on the thwarts to fend the boats clear of 
the ice. The landing parties clambered over the 
broken and tumbled ice, dragging the harpoon 
lines. We found the whale half exposed in a 
narrow opening in the center of the floe, all the 
ice about it red with clotted blood. Long John 
and Little Johnny threw two harpoons each into 
the big body and Big Foot Louis threw his re- 
maining one. As a result of this bombardment, 
five tonite bombs exploded in the whale, which, 
with the harpoons sticking all over its back, sug- 
gested a baited bull in a Spanish bullring hung 
with the darts of the banderilleros. But the 
great animal kept on breathing blood and would 
not die. After all the harpoons had been ex- 
hausted, shoulder guns were brought into play. 
In all, twelve tonite bombs were fired into it 
before the monster gave a mighty shiver and 
lay still. 

But with the whale dead, we still had a big 
problem on our hands. In some way the giant 



242 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

bulk had to be hauled out of the ice. This was 
a difficult matter even with plenty of time in 
which to do it. Night was coming on and it was 
the brig's custom in the hours of darkness to 
sail far away from the great ice pack with its 
edging of floating bergs and floes in order to 
avoid possible accident and to sail back to the 
whaling grounds on the morrow. This Captain 
Shorey prepared to do now. As a solution of the 
dilemma, an empty bread cask or hogshead was 
brought on deck and the name of the brig was 
seared in its staves with a hot iron in several 
places. This cask was towed to the floe, hauled 
up on the edge of the ice, and the long line of 
one of the harpoons sticking in the whale was 
made fast to it by means of staples. Thus the 
cask marked the floe in which the whale was 
lying. 

It was growing dark when the brig wen? 
about, said good-night to the whale, and headed 
for open water to the south. We sailed away 
before a stiff breeze and soon cask and floe and 
the great white continent beyond had faded 
from view. When morning broke we were bowl- 



THE STRANDED WHALE 243 

ing along under light sail in a choppy sea with 
nothing but water to be seen in any direction. 
The great ice cap was somewhere out of sight 
over the world's northern rim. Not a floe, a 
berg, or the smallest white chunk of ice floated 
anywhere in the purple sphere of sea ringed by 
the wide horizon. Being a green hand, I said to 
myself, " Good-bye, Mr. Whale, we certainly 
have seen the last we'll ever see of you." 

Let me make the situation perfectly clear. 
Our whale was drifting somewhere about the 
Arctic Ocean embedded in an ice floe scarcely 
to be distinguished from a thousand other floes 
except by a cask upon its margin which at a 
distance of a few miles would hardly be visible 
through strong marine glasses. The floe, re- 
member, was not a stationary object whose lon- 
gitude and latitude could be reckoned certainly, 
but was being tossed about by the sea and driven 
by the winds and ocean currents. The brig, on 
the other hand, had been sailing on the wind 
without a set course. It had been tacking and 
wearing from time to time. It, too, had felt the 
compulsion of the waves and currents. So 



244 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

throughout the night the brig had sailed at ran- 
dom and twenty miles or so away the whale in 
its floe had been drifting at random. Xow how 
were we going to find our whale again? This 
struck me that morning on the open sea with 
neither whale nor ice in sight, as a problem cer- 
tainly very nice, if not hopeless. The way it was 
solved was as pretty a feat of navigation as I 
ever saw. 

When Captain Shorey came on deck after 
breakfast, he " shot the sun " through his sex- 
tant and went below to make his calculations. 
In a little while he came on deck again and 
stepped to the man at the wheel. The helmsman 
was steering full and by. 

" How do you head? " asked Captain Shorey. 

" Northwest," answered the sailor. 

" Keep her northwest by west half west," said 
the captain. 

For several hours the brig sailed steadily on 
this course. Along about 9 o'clock, we saw the 
peculiar, cold, light look above the sky line ahead 
which meant ice and which sailors call an " ice 
horizon," to be distinguished at a glance from 



THE STRANDED WHALE 245 

a water horizon, which is dark. A little later, 
we sighted the white loom of the great ice con- 
tinent. Later still, we picked up the bergs, 
floes, islands, and chunks of ice which drift for- 
ever along its edge. 

The brig kept on its course. A floe of ice, 
looking at a distance like a long, narrow ribbon, 
lay ahead of us, apparently directly across our 
path. As we drew nearer, we began to make 
out dimly a certain dark speck upon the edge of 
the ice. This speck gradually assumed definite- 
ness. It was our cask and we were headed 
straight for it. To a landlubber unacquainted 
with the mysteries of navigation, this incident 
may seem almost unbelievable, but upon my 
honest word, it is true to the last detail. 

After the brig had been laid aback near the 
ice, a boat was lowered and a hole was cut in 
the bow of the whale's head, A cable was 
passed through this and the other end was made 
fast aboard the ship. Then under light sail, the 
brig set about the work of pulling the whale out 
of the ice. The light breeze fell away and the 
three boats were strung out ahead with haw- 



246 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

sers and lent assistance with the oars. It was 
slow work. But when the breeze freshened, the 
ice began gradually to give, then to open up, 
and finally the whale was hauled clear and 
drawn alongside for the cutting in. 



CHAPTER XXIII 



AND SO — HOME 



IT was on October tenth that we broke out 
the Stars and Stripes at our main gaff and 
squared our yards for home. Everybody 
cheered as the flag went fluttering up, for every- 
body was glad that the end of the long, hard 
voyage was in sight. Behring Straits which 
when we were about to enter the Arctic Ocean — 
sea of tragedy and graveyard of so many brave 
men and tall ships — had looked like the portals 
of inferno, now when we were homeward bound 
seemed like the gateway to the Happy Isles. 

The four whales we had captured on the voy- 
age had averaged about 1,800 pounds of baleen, 
which that year was quoted at $6.50 a pound. 
We had tried out all our whales except the last 
one and our casks were filled with oil. Our en- 
tire catch was worth over $50,000. The officers 
and boatsteerers made a pretty penny out of 

247! 



248 A YEAR WITH, A WHALER 

the voyage. The captain, I was told, had 
shipped on a lay of one-sixth — and got it. The 
sailors had shipped on the 190th lay — and didn't 
get it. That was the difference. At San Fran- 
cisco, the forecastle hands were paid off with the 
" big iron dollar " of whaling tradition. 

The homeward voyage was not a time of idle- 
ness. We were kept busy a large part of the 
time cleaning the bone of our last three whales 
— the bone from our first whale had been shipped 
to San Francisco from Unalaska. As we had 
at first stowed it away, the baleen was in bunches 
of ten or a dozen slabs held together at the roots 
by " white horse," which is the whaler name for 
the gums of the whale. These bunches were now 
brought up on deck and each slab of baleen was 
cut out of the gums separately and washed and 
scoured with cocoanut rind procured for the 
purpose in the Hawaiian Islands. Then the 
slabs were dried and polished until they shone 
like gun metal, tied into bales, and stowed under 
hatches once more. 

A little south of King's Island in the northern 
end of Behring Sea, Captain Shorey set a course 



AND SO— HOME 249 

for Unimak Pass. We ran down Behring Sea 
with a gale of wind sweeping us before it and 
great billows bearing us along. When we bore 
up for the dangerous passage which had given 
us such a scare in the spring, we were headed 
straight for it, and we went through into the Pa- 
cific without pulling a rope. It was another re- 
markable example of the navigating skill of 
whaling captains. We had aimed at Unimak 
Pass when 700 miles away and had scored a 
bull's-eye. 

Again the " roaring forties " lived up to their 
name and buffeted us with gale and storm. The 
first land we sighted after leaving the Fox 
Islands was the wooded hills of northern Cali- 
fornia. I shall never forget how beautiful those 
hills appeared and what a welcome they seemed 
to hold out. They were my own country again, 
the United States — home. My eyes grew misty 
as I gazed at them and I felt much as a small 
boy might feel who, after long absence, sees his 
mother's arms open to him. The tug that picked 
us up outside of Golden Gate at sundown one 
day seemed like a long lost friend. It was long 



;EC 20 1313 

25Q A YEAR WITH A WHALER 

after darkness had fallen, that it towed us into 
San Francisco harbor, past the darkly frowning 
Presidio and the twinkling lights of Telegraph 
Hill, to an anchorage abreast the city, brilliantly 
lighted and glowing like fairyland. I never in 
all my life heard sweeter music than the rattle 
and clank of the anchor chain as the great an- 
chor plunged into the bay and sank to its grip 
in good American soil once more. 

My whaling voyage was over. It was an ad- 
venture out of the ordinary, an experience in- 
forming, interesting, health-giving, and perhaps 
worth while. I have never regretted it. But I 
wouldn't do it again for ten thousand dollars. 



,THE END 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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